As you read the two chapters in What Does It All Mean? due Tuesday, note any sentences or passages that strike you as especially meaningful, puzzling or provoking. Copy the sentence or passage here and then offer a 150-200 word commentary. This post closes Monday at midnight. (And yes--that's Thomas Nagel, who teaches, I believe, at NYU.)
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Reactions to Nagel
As you read the two chapters in What Does It All Mean? due Tuesday, note any sentences or passages that strike you as especially meaningful, puzzling or provoking. Copy the sentence or passage here and then offer a 150-200 word commentary. This post closes Monday at midnight. (And yes--that's Thomas Nagel, who teaches, I believe, at NYU.)
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"The idea that our lives fulfill God's purpose is supposed to give them their point, in a way that doesn't require or readmit of any further point. One isn't supposed to ask 'What is the point of God?' anymore than one is supposed to ask 'what is the explanation of God?'"
People who have a desire to define life's purpose often turn to God as the answer. That is because there seems to be no other valid, concise explanation--nothing else that is comfortable to believe in. Nagel afterwards brings up an interesting point--he says he finds it hard to believe that there could be something which gives point to everything else, but has no point itself. I personally do not find that hard to believe in at all. The argument seems valid to me--If god is the creator, or the 'prime-mover' he couldn't have any point to himself at all. Or perhaps the 'point of god' is to give point to everything else. Perhaps god exists simply for that reason.
It seems a very comfortable logical conclusion to come to, and therefore billions of people have believed in god and his purpose. God is different to everyone, and to some he does not exist at all. There are those who are comfortable with knowing he doesn't exist, and there are those who aren't comfortable with that idea at all. I believe it is all a matter of preference.
The soul would have to exsist on it's own and have a mental life without the help of the body; then it might leave the body when the body dies, instead of being destroyed:
The thought of life after death has always been put into consideration however its different when someone puts into the perspective like Nagel did, it changes things. Nagel is saying that, in order to experience an afterlife, your mind would need to be able to continue without the body as its own entity. Usually, we see the mind and body as a package deal. However, for afterlife, it would only make sense that the mind would have to continue after the body has failed. Perhaps that is what Nagel is trying to say, that not all life has to be physical, and mental life is simply life without a body. Is that why you can go through ghosts, because their physical body is somewhere 6 feet below? It is just difficult for people to beileve, or even understand how it would be possible for person's life to continue without both their mind and body to be working together simultainously.
"... But what if your life as a whole did have a point in relation to something larger? would that mean that it wasn't meaningless after all?"
Although the "what if" questions are usually ridiculous and have no answer, this question above makes me think about a lot of things. From what i personally believe, i understand that it is totally true. Our life here on earth is just temporary and it prepares us for the after life. However you live your life on earth, it will either direct you to paradise or hell. You don't have to live by the book, but you also have to be a "good" human being. If you ask What is "good"? the answer to that obviously comes from the bible. Overall, my point here is that this statment from Nagel's book just makes me think about how my life on earth is very important and i would probably never think that it is meaningless or there is no point of it at all.
"The idea seems to be that we are in some kind of rat race, struggling to achieve our goals and make something of our lives, but that this makes sense only if those achievements will be permanent, But they won't be"
I found this quote to be interesting because Nagel says that nothing in this universe is permanent. In a sense of science, matter is matter, and bonds will decay over time as new bonds and new potential creations can occur. So the matter and bonds that make us humans will eventually disappear, and then we will be gone, our matter is scattered to the corners of the universe. So then, I wonder, is everything as nihilistic as he claims it is? Will nothing last and will everything be destroyed? Is humanity, like the rest of the world, destined to die out and be recreated when our matter reforms? Is it then true that since our matter does not decay, then the particles of our creation, our legacy, will exist, but never in it's original form? What if proton decay is true, and thus nothing, not even matter, exists permanently? Then how did matter get created? How did matter occur, and how was it formed, and what formed it? What does matter decay into then, if it does decay? Is there even a more basic block of it? How did this all happen?
“If death without anything is either a good or a bad thing for the person who dies, it must be a negative good or evil.”
This statement reminds me a lot of what Lao Tzu says in the Tao, about how goodness implies evil and existence implies nonexistence. This seems to be saying that if there is something good, then the absence of that is bad, and likewise if something is bad. I am not sure if I necessarily agree with that however. Just because something is absent does not mean what it was not is there. For example, you are feeling good, and then after a while that feeling fades away. That does not mean now that you are feeling sad or depressed, in fact you probably feel the same as before you were happy. I guess it would be similar to the Cave, where you feel the joy, and are less inclined to not be happy. Its the same situation with death, even if you are losing all of the good things in your life, that does not mean you gain worse things. However, since you are not aware of this loss, it can only be conceived prior to death.
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