The Big Picture

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The Big Picture Page 66

by Carroll, Sean M.


  Rick Warren’s bestselling book The Purpose- Driven Life opens with a sim-

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  ple admonition: “It’s not about you.” It might come as a surprise that a book

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  so many people have turned to for comfort and advice begins on such a

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  down note. But Warren’s strategy is to appeal precisely to people’s sense of

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  being overwhelmed at life’s challenges. He offers them a direct way out: it’s

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  not about you; it’s about God.

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  You don’t have to accept Warren’s theology to sympathize with the im-

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  pulse. There are many ways it could be about something other than us: we

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  could be spiritually inclined without belonging to a traditional organized

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  religion, or we could feel devoted to a culture or nation or family, or we

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  could believe in objective forms of meaning based on scientific grounds.

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  Any such strategy can be both challenging, in the sense that it can be hard

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  to live up to the standards that are imposed on you, but also comforting,

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  because at least there are standards, darn it.

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  Poetic naturalism offers no such escape from the demands of meeting

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  life in a creative and individual way. It is about you: it’s up to you, me, and 24

  every other person to create meaning and purpose for ourselves. This can

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  be a scary prospect, not to mention exhausting. We can decide that what we

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  want is to devote ourselves to something larger— but that decision comes

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  from us.

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  The ascendance of naturalism has removed the starting point for much

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  of how we used to conceive of our place in the universe. We’re Wile E. Coy-

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  ote, and we’ve just looked down. We need some new ground to stand on—

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  or we need to learn how to fly.

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  There are two legitimate worries about the idea that we construct meaning

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  for our lives.

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  The first worry is that it’s cheating. Maybe we are fooling ourselves if we

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  t h R E E b I l l I O n h E A R t b E At S

  think we can find fulfillment once we accept that we are part of the physical

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  world, patterns of elementary particles beholden to the laws of physics.

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  Sure, you can say you are leading a rich and rewarding life based on your

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  love for your family and friends, your dedication to your craft, and your

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  work to make the world a better place. But are you really? If the value we

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  place in such things isn’t objectively determined, and if you won’t be around

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  to witness any of it in a hundred years or so, how can you say your life truly

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  matters?

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  This is just grumpiness talking. Say you love somebody, genuinely and

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  fiercely. And let’s say you also believe in a higher spiritual power, and think

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  of your love as a manifestation of that greater spiritual force. But you’re also

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  an honest Bayesian, willing to update your credences in light of the evi-

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  dence. Somehow, over the course of time, you accumulate a decisive amount

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  of new information that shifts your planet of belief from spiritual to natu-

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  ralist. You’ve lost what you thought was the source of your love— do you

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  lose the love itself? Are you now obligated to think that the love you felt is

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  now somehow illegitimate?

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  No. Your love is still there, as pure and true as ever. How you would

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  explain your feelings in terms of an underlying ontological vocabulary has

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  changed, but you’re still in love. Water doesn’t stop being wet when you

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  learn it’s a compound of hydrogen and oxygen.

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  The same goes for purpose, meaning, and our sense of right and wrong.

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  If you are moved to help those less fortunate than you, it doesn’t matter

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  whether you are motivated by a belief that it’s God’s will, or by a personal

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  conviction that it’s the right thing to do. Your values are no less real ei-

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  ther way.

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  The second worry about creating meaning within ourselves is that there

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  isn’t any place to start. If neither God nor the universe is going to help us

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  attach significance to our actions, the whole project seems suspiciously ar-

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  bitrary.

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  But we do have a starting place: who we are. As living, thinking organ-

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  isms, we are creatures of motion and motivation. At a basic, biological level,

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  we are defined not by the atoms that make us up but by the dynamic pat-

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  terns we trace out as we move through the world. The most important thing

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  about life is that it occurs out of equilibrium, driven by the second law. To

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  stay alive, we have to continually move, process information, and interact

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  with our environment.

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  In human terms, the dynamic nature of life manifests itself as desire.

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  There is always something we want, even if what we want is to break free of

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  the bonds of desire. That’s not a sustainable goal; to stay alive, we have to

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  eat, drink, breathe, metabolize, and generally continue to ride the wave of

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  increasing entropy.

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  Desire has a bad reputation in certain circles, but that’s a bum rap. Cu-

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  riosity is a form of desire; so are helpfulness and artistic drive. Desire is an

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  aspect of caring: about ourselves, about other people, about what happens

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  to the world.

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  People are not inanimate rocks, accepting what goes on around them

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  with serene indifference. Different people might exhibit different levels of

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  care, and they might care in different ways, but caring itself is ubiquitous.

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  They might care in an admirable way, watching out for the well- being of

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  others, or their caring might be purely selfish, guarding their own interests.

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  But people are inescapably characterized by what they care about: their en-

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  thusiasms, inclinations, passions, hopes.

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  When our lives are in good shape, and we are enjoying health and lei-

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  sure, what do we do? We play. Once the basic requirements of food and

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  shelter have been met, we immediately invent games and puzzles and com-

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  petitions. That’s a lighthearted and fun manifestation of a deeper impulse:

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  we enjoy challenging ourselves, accomplishing things, having something to

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  show for our lives.

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  That makes sense, in light of evolution. An organism that didn’t give a

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  crap about anything that happened to it would be at a severe disadvantage

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  in the struggle for survival when compared to one that looked out for itself,

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  its family, and its compatriots. We are built from the start to care about the

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  world, to make it matter.

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  Our evolutionary heritage isn’t the whole story. The emergence of con-

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  sciousness means that what we care about, and how we behave in response

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  to those impulses, can change over time as a result of our learning, our in-

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  teraction with others, and our own self- reflection. Our instincts and unre-

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  flective desires aren’t all we have; they’re just a starting point for building

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  something significant.

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  Human beings are not blank slates at birth, and our slates become in-

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  creasingly rich and multidimensional as we grow and learn. We are bub-

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  bling cauldrons of preferences, wants, sentiments, aspirations, likes,

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  feelings, attitudes, predilections, values, and devotions. We aren’t slaves to

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  our desires; we have the capacity to reflect on them and strive to change

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  them. But they make us who we are. It is from these inclinations within

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  ourselves that we are able to construct purpose and meaning for our lives.

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  The world, and what happens in the world, matters. Why? Because it

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  matters to me. And to you.

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  The personal desires and cares that we start with may be simple and self-

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  regarding. But we can build on them to create values that look beyond our-

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  selves, to the wider world. It’s our choice, and the choice we make can be to

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  expand our horizons, to find meaning in something larger than ourselves.

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  The movie It’s a Wonderful Life has unmistakable religious

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  underpinnings— it’s Christmas Eve, and George Bailey is saved from kill-

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  ing himself by the intervention of a guardian angel. But as author Chris

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  Johnson has pointed out, what changes George’s mind isn’t words of angelic

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  wisdom; it’s the demonstration that his life had a tangible, positive effect

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  on the lives of other people in the town of Bedford Falls. Real stuff, here on

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  Earth, the lives we actually lead. In the end, that’s the only place meaning

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  can possibly reside.

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  The construction of meaning is a fundamentally individual, subjective,

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  creative enterprise, and an intimidating responsibility. As Carl Sagan put

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  it, “We are star stuff, which has taken its destiny into its own hands.”

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  The finitude of life lends poignancy to our situations. Each of us will

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  have a last word we say, a last book we read, a last time we fall in love. At

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  each moment, who we are and how we behave is a choice that we individu-

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  ally make. The challenges are real; the opportunities are incredible.

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  What Is and What Ought to Be

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  david Hume, the eighteenth- century Scottish thinker whom we’ve

  encountered before as a forefather of poetic naturalism, is widely

  regarded as a central figure of the Enlightenment. When he was

  only twenty- three years old, he began work on a book that would turn out

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  to be extraordinarily influential, A Treatise of Human Nature. At least, it

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  would be judged so by history; at the time, Hume’s ambition to write a

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  bestseller fell somewhat short, as he lamented that the book “fell dead- born

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  from the press.”

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  We should give Hume credit for trying to be a lively writer, even if the

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  reading public didn’t necessarily agree. In one famous passage, he sardoni-

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  cally remarks on what he sees as a curious tendency among his fellow phi-

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  losophers: a predilection for suddenly declaiming what ought to be true

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  when they had previously been describing only what is true.

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  In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with,

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  I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time

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  in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a

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  God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of

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  a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copula-

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  tions of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition

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  that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change

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  is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as

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  this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or

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  W h At I S A n d W h A t Ou g h t t O b E

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  David Hume. (Painting by Allan Ramsay)

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  affirmation, ’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and

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  explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given,

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  for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation

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  can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different

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  from it.

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  While it’s amusing to think of propositions copulating with each other,

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  Hume’s sentences admittedly do go on a bit. But his main point is clear:

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  talking about “oughts” is an entirely different kind of thing from simply

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  talking about what “is.” The former is passing a judgment, saying what

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  should be the case; the latter is merely descriptive, saying what actually hap-

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  pens. If you’re going to perform such a magic trick and call it philosophy,

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  you should at least have the consideration to tell us how the trick is done.

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  Modern thought has distilled the point down to a maxim: “You can’t derive

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  ought from is.”

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  There is an apparent problem here for naturalism: if you can’t derive

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  ought from is, then you’re in trouble, because “is” is all there is. There isn’t

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  T H E B IG PIC T U R E

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  anything outside the natural world to which we can turn for guidance

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  about how to behave. The temptation to somehow extract such guidance

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  from the natural world itself is incredibly strong.

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  But it doesn’t work. The natural world doesn’t pass judgment; it doesn’t

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  provide guidance; it doesn’t know or care about what ought to happen. We

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  are allowed to pass judgment ourselves, and we’re part of the natural world,

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  but different people are going to end up with different judgments. So be it.

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  To see why it’s impossible to derive ought from is, it’s useful to think about

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  how we can ever derive anything from anything else. There are many such

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  ways, but let’s focus in on one of the simplest: the logical syl ogism, paradigm 13

  of deductive reasoning. Syllogisms look like this:

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  1. Socrates is a living creature.

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  2. All living creatures obey the laws of physics.

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  3. Therefore, Socrates obeys the laws of physics.

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  This is just one example of the general form, which can be expressed as:

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  1. X is true.

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  2. If X is true, then Y is true.

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  3. Therefore, Y is true.

 

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