Responding to Conundrum, Again

This is a response to a video and blog post by Conundrum. I will insert blocks of text from his blog post and respond to them. He opens with:

A response to videos by BlitheringGenius, where he to argues that reproduction is the only source of value and that those who do not reproduce are losers. I show major cracks in the foundation of his argument, which make it crumble to dust.

Sounds exciting. Let’s see if it lives up to the hype.

He is responding to the videos:

• Reproduction | Masturbation
• The Zen of Being an Entropy Tube

I have offered a voice discussion/debate to Conundrum, but he has rejected it.

Yes, I claim that reproduction is the biological purpose of life, and the ultimate source of value. Psychology is downstream from biology. Psychological desires get their normativity from emotions, and emotions are an evolved mechanism, which was selected to generate adaptive behavior. We can trace back all values to biology. Will Conundrum make any rational argument against that?

Spoiler: No, he won’t.

So, yes, I believe that human beings are reproducing machines, and those who fail to reproduce are biological losers.

Notice that Conundrum omits “biological” when he paraphrases me. I say things like “Reproduction is the biological purpose of life”. Conundrum would paraphrase that as “Reproduction is the purpose of life”. This is misleading. I clearly specify the value standard involved in value judgments, and I distinguish between different types of value: biological, psychological, social and philosophical.

See What is Value?.

Also, neither of those videos argues that reproduction is the biological purpose of life. That is a premise of both, not a conclusion. Reproduction | Masturbation makes the point that even maladaptive behavior is usually a parody of adaptive behavior. It is about the relationship between psychology and biology. The Zen of Being an Entropy Tube is a ramble that was inspired by a quote from Alan Watts. It doesn’t have a single point, but the most important point is that the pessimistic view of life (e.g. efilism) is based on a value standard that is, itself, a kind of deception. In that video, I briefly explain how evolution bootstraps value from causality, but that’s not the main point, and I’ve explained it better elsewhere. If you are interested, I suggest listening to it.

I have a lot of content, and I assume that the audience is somewhat familiar with it. Those videos depend, to some extent, on previously published content.

Introduction

I will be responding to and commenting on two videos by BlitheringGenius, where he tries to argue that reproduction is the only source of value and that those who do not reproduce are losers. While such arguments are not novel, BlitheringGenius presents them in considerable detail, warranting a response.

I do not believe in any meaning of life or the purpose of our existence or anything like that. I do not believe in free will, souls, other planes of existence, etc. I do not believe that morality exists independently of the doings of rational agents. Additionally, I do not believe in a single conception of who or what we are. So, I am immune to most, if not all, attacks of BG that he directs at the opponents in the two videos I’m commenting on. However, he explicitly attacks pessimists. Now, I feel called out.

Interesting. Conundrum says that he does not believe in any meaning of life or a purpose to our existence. However, he also considers himself a “pessimist”. This is a contradiction.

Pessimism requires a context that has values, and thus meaning/purpose. A pessimist views life as generally bad or probably having a bad outcome. Note the word “bad”, which is a value judgment. So, there must be a value standard by which life is judged bad or good. But if there is no meaning or purpose to life, there is no value standard by which life can be judged.

Maybe Conundrum should start by thinking critically about his own beliefs, before he tries to critique anyone else’s.

Summary of BG’s argument

First, BG wants to make the case that the purpose of life is reproduction, and everything that does not serve reproduction or leads us away from reproducing is a mistake. All desires and emotions serve the purpose of reproduction, he says, because it’s the basis of natural selection. Reproduction is our natural purpose. Reproduction is the only source of value in the universe. We are reproducing machines.

Well, yes, the biological purpose of life is reproduction, and the choice to not reproduce is maladaptive: a biological error. Yes, reproduction is your natural purpose. Yes, reproduction is the only source of value in the universe. Psychological, social and even philosophical values are downstream from biological value, because they depend on brains. The form of the brain evolved to generate adaptive behavior. Human nature is determined by evolution. That’s the point. Yes, we are reproducing machines.

According to him, only reproduction creates value, because it’s a process where the effect — the organism — creates new entities that act as causes that make the same effects — their offspring will also reproduce. Value is that cyclical process.

No, reproduction does not “create” value, and value is not that cyclical process. Value is a good-bad axis. We can define different types of value. The two most important are psychological and biological.

Again, see What is Value?.

Psychologically, value is a basic subject-object relation: I value that. We subjectively experience psychological value in value judgments. “I want that” is a value judgment, which projects value onto an object or event. “That is good” and “That is bad” are other formats.

Biologically, value is reproductive fitness, which is the basis of natural selection. Biological value emerges from causality by the loop of reproduction. Biological forms have been selected to have functions. The function is an effect of the form (as an instance). For example, the hand has the function of grasping objects. That is an effect of a hand — something that it does. However, that is also a cause of the hand. A hand that could not grasp objects could not evolve. My hand can grasp objects because my ancestor’s hands could grasp objects, and that helped them to reproduce. We can trace back every biological function to the purpose of reproduction.

So, biological value comes first. Psychological value derives from biological value. Psychological value gets its normativity from emotions, which are evolved mechanisms. Those mechanisms evolved to generate adaptive behavior. Even if, in this environment, people act in maladaptive ways, such as choosing not to have children, they are still motivated by emotions that evolved to make them reproduce. That is why they act out a parody of adaptive behavior, such as having sex with birth control, having pets instead of children, seeking money and status for their own sake, etc. That is the point I make in Reproduction | Masturbation.

If our emotions hinder our reproduction, then they are wrong. We engage in various behaviors that make us feel good, but they don’t make us reproduce. Such fake actions are mistakes — we delude ourselves about the values of said actions. We can choose not to reproduce and do some other things, like protected sex or having a cat, but we’re still acting out our reproductive motives. We’re performing acts but without getting the real effect, which is having children. Those who reproduce are successful, those who do not reproduce are failures.

If our emotions hinder our reproduction, they are biologically wrong, or in other words, maladaptive. We can judge desires (psychological value judgments) with respect to the biological value standard, as biologically good or bad. For example, wanting to have children is biologically good, while wanting to not have children is biologically bad. A desire that is instrumental to reproduction is biologically good. One that conflicts with reproduction is biologically bad.

We are not “acting out our reproductive motives”. I’ve never said anything like that. We don’t have “reproductive motives”. We have emotions, which are ad hoc, heuristic and stimulus-dependent. The motivation system is an evolved mechanism, and it generates motivation (and pleasure and pain). Emotions are not desires. Desires are psychological value judgments. For example, “I want a red truck” is a desire, not an emotion. It gets normativity from emotions, but it has other content, such as the concept of a red truck, which was acquired from experience.

See Motivation.

Yes, those who reproduce are biologically successful. Those who don’t reproduce are biological failures. Conundrum keeps omitting “biological” in these statements, as if I had only one concept of value. You could be a biological failure, but a success by some other value standard. For example, a Christian might judge his life to be a success if he is good by the moral and religious standards of Christianity.

Again, the point of Reproduction | Masturbation is that, even if you choose not to reproduce, your actions will resemble those of a reproducing machine. You will act out a parody of being a reproducing machine. You won’t discover some external source of value and start acting toward it. You will just do fake versions of adaptive behaviors, such as having sex with birth control, or taking care of a cat instead of a child, or accumulating resources that have no reproductive utility, etc.

When I was a kid, I went to the zoo, and I saw a polar bear that lived in a relatively small enclosure. The bear walked back and forth on its concrete platform. At the end, it swung its paw over the edge, and then turned and went back. Over and over. It was acting out a parody (a fake version) of its natural behavior, because it was in an unnatural environment. In the wild, polar bears range over vast distances. In captivity, the bear cannot walk over the ice floes, so it paces back and forth.

With modern civilization, human beings have put themselves into a new environment, to which we are not adapted. Many people are acting out a parody of natural human behavior, like the bear.

After that, BG wants to attack the pessimist, who casts a negative value on life, existence, the world, and reproduction. He says that the pessimist is also just a mere reproducing machine and he’s being motivated by the very desires he rejects. The pessimist imagined some ideals with respect to which he judges the world as bad. But these ideals are delusions — desires programmed into us to make us reproduce. All of our ideals and virtues are means for reproduction. All of that philosophizing about the world being bad is just the brain trying to get status in the society, to get recognition, to get resources, and — ultimately — to reproduce.

Do I want to “attack” the pessimist? No, I don’t really care about the pessimist. Reproduction | Masturbation was not directed at pessimists, or efilists, or anyone in that general vicinity. It was directed at my audience. The Zen of Being an Entropy Tube was a response to two pessimists: Alpha Minus and the character described by Watts. I was not “attacking” them. I was pointing out the irony of their situation: that they reject the illusion descriptively, but accept it normatively. They understand that they are reproducing machines, but view this as bad because it doesn’t fit their ideal conception of themselves and/or life.

The pessimist character (in Watts’ story) formerly believed that he was a transcendent being with a cosmic purpose. Then, he discovered that he is “just” a reproducing machine. After this epiphany, he condemns life for not being magical and transcendent. He rejects the illusion as a description of life, but not as a normative standard for life.

Yes, the pessimist is a “mere” reproducing machine. What else could he be? No, he’s not motivated by the “desires” that he rejects. He’s motivated by emotions that evolved to make him reproduce.

No, his ideals are not desires programmed into him to make him reproduce. Desires are not programmed into our brains, but they get their normativity from emotions, which are innate. In the story told by Alan Watts, the ideals are camouflage, used to hide one’s real emotions and desires from others. People deceive others, and then end up deceiving themselves.

So no, the ideals and virtues are not necessarily means for reproduction, or at least, not directly. In many cases, they are lies that we tell each other, to manipulate each other. We might believe them ourselves, but still use them to control others.

There is a lot going on in that little story by Watts, and in my little ramble about it.

Yes, the philosophical pessimist has the same motives as everyone else, more or less. He writes his books or blog posts to get attention, social status, etc. He wants to have sex with nubile women. He wants to make money. He gets hungry and wants a sandwich. He is probably more motivated by curiosity than most people. There are emotional differences between people, and there are also differences of experience. But all emotions have biological functions, and all of those functions are instrumental to reproduction. And all desires get their force from emotions. The philosopher isn’t tapping into some magical well of transcendent meaning and purpose. He is a brain in a skull, like everyone else.

BG suggests that, instead of deluding ourselves with ideals, we should just accept the truth. We are reproducing machines, and there is no escaping this condition. Instead of pretending not to be reproducing machines and living a lie, lamenting what we are, we can become successful at what we really are, this way, we would live more honest and fulfilling lives.

Yes, I do suggest that we accept the truth.

I also propose accepting your nature and embracing it, rather than rejecting it. That is my choice. But I’ve never said that you must accept it, philosophically. There is no uniquely rational value standard — no ultimately “correct” one. It takes a value to value a value, so you have to bootstrap yourself out of the abyss, or not, as you choose.

See Lucifer’s Question.

Also, I don’t claim that you will have a “fulfilling” life, whatever that means. You will be a more-or-less successful reproducing machine, depending on what you do. Reproduction is an open-ended goal, so it is never “fulfilled”.

Conundrum’s summary of my views is extremely misleading. Now, let’s see if the critique is any better. (Spoiler: It isn’t.)

The ground for the discussion

We all have to take for granted that we are rational beings. That is, we are capable of rational thought. It doesn’t mean that we’re perfectly rational, only that we are capable of rational thought. We can learn certain things about the world. We can make conclusions. We can make evaluations.

BG cannot simply say that all our mental faculties are in the service of reproduction, irrespective of the truth. That is, he cannot claim that we are not rational. That would undermine his own argumentation, since it would not be rational on his grounds. His argument would not be rational, with no pretense to truth. And so, it would fall as it wouldn’t stand on any ground whatsoever.

So, while we can believe in us being reproducing machines, he has to admit that what he’s saying is reasonable and rational, because we are capable of rational thinking and making true claims. So, we’re not mere reproducing machines, because we’re at least beings capable of rational thinking.

I’m not sure Conundrum is capable of rational thought. That made no sense.

It’s like saying a car is not merely a transportation machine, because it has headlights. It is also an illumination machine. Yes, but the illumination has a function that is instrumental to transportation.

Thought is instrumental to reproduction. The brain is an evolved mechanism. Mental processes have biological functions. All our mental faculties are instrumental to reproduction.

It does not follow that we are not rational. How would it? Rationality is a natural norm of thought, like grasping is for the hand. It defines the ideal function of mental faculties.

I don’t know what strange mental error Conundrum is making. He seems very confused.

IS BG A LOSER (BY HIS OWN STANDARDS)?

If reproduction is the standard by which we measure “success”, then by BG’s own ideology, he is not winning. The winners would be men like Genghis Khan or those who impregnate as many women as possible. The winners would be bacteria that reproduce in great numbers. The winners would be some animals who have hundreds of offspring. But most likely, BG has 2-5 children. So, by his own standards, he is a very lousy reproductor.

Am I a biological loser?

Well, I have 5 children with my wife, and others by sperm donation, so I’m more successful than most men.

Conundrum seems to view reproduction as a contest with a single winner, rather than a purpose. Genghis Khan might be more successful, but that doesn’t make me a failure.

Conundrum also needs to get a basic biology textbook. A bacterium reproduces by simple cell division, so it only has 2 “offspring” at most. (As with most things in biology, there are some weird exceptions.)

Reproduction is not a contest between men, bacteria, salmon and oak trees. It is not necessarily a contest, although it often involves a struggle for resources or mates, especially with other members of one’s species.

Different types of life have different life-cycles. Some produce millions of offspring, of which very few survive to adulthood. Humans have relatively few offspring, compared to oak trees and oysters. It does not follow that we are less successful, on average. The life-cycles of oak trees, oysters and humans are all successful reproductive strategies. That’s why oak trees, oysters and humans exist.

There are different ways to measure reproductive success for an individual. For some species, living to maturity pretty much guarantees reproductive success. For others, such as humans, the number of offspring is a decent metric. A better metric is the number of grandchildren, but it’s not determined until later in life.

If you really want to understand biology, evolution and biological purpose, read the book Debunking the Selfish Gene. There is also a blog post, which contains some of the core ideas in the book.

Now, what does my biological success or failure have to do with my philosophical positions, or the two videos?

Absolutely nothing.

I could be a total biological failure, or have more descendants than Ghengis Khan, and it would not change the rationality of my arguments.

So, why does Conundrum attempt this lame ad hominem? Why does he present it as a “critique”, when it is utterly irrelevant?

Because Conundrum is motivated toward social status. His emotions cause him to perceive this situation as a zero-sum contest for dominance, as if he and I were monkeys in the same troop, competing for the same females and other resources. He wants to take me down a notch. He is acting out a parody of monkey competition. This is somewhat ironic, considering the topic.

I don’t think Conundrum cares very much about philosophy. He is more concerned with intellectual status, real or illusory. That explains why he lies, and why he hasn’t bothered to critique his own beliefs, so he has glaring contradictions in his worldview.

I’m not claiming to be “above” such “base” motives as pursuing status, etc. I am a monkey too. But I am a more honest, intelligent and philosophical monkey. When I was young, I spent a lot of time thinking about philosophy on my own, outside a social context.

See How I Became Amoral, How I Rejected Hedonism, and Knowledge and Reality.

THERE IS NO SUCCESS IN NATURE

There is no “success” in nature. “Success” is a man-made concept that has been projected onto biology. Saying that an animal or a species “succeeds” is mistakenly anthropomorphizing nature. This is a clear equivocation on the term “success”. The term “evolutionary success” has a very particular and technical meaning. It is used merely to point to the spread of some population in an environment. This has nothing to do with what we mean by “success” in any other context.

Of course there is success in nature. There are successful oak trees and unsuccessful oak trees, successful oysters and unsuccessful oysters, successful bacteria and unsuccessful bacteria, etc. Value terms are used in biology, because value is part of biology. Biological forms have functions. I’m not anthropomorphizing nature. I clearly distinguish biological value from psychological value.

In BG’s argument, actions that do not ultimately lead to reproduction are “bad”. Such acts are described pejoratively as “spinning the wheels”, “masturbation”, “fake actions”, etc. BG clearly places negative value on actions that are not directed at reproduction. It is clear that he wants to do that from the perspective of evolution. However, there is no “failure” or “success” in evolution. There are just animals living in their ecosystems. Evolution is the change in the frequency of alleles in a given population. There is no “success” or “failure” in the change of the genetic makeup. It’s just that — change. It is impossible to make such value judgments, because evolutionary process does not have any inherent values. The only values there are are the values that animals put on things — objects, environment, other animals, behaviors, etc. We could project some value on nature, for example by saying that it’s bad when a beautiful bird goes extinct or that it’s bad when a pest spreads in the ecosystem. But these are our own values — not that of evolution.

I never said that actions that do not lead to reproduction are “bad”. Conundrum put the word in quotes, but that’s not what I said. In most cases, I use the word “maladaptive”. I don’t conflate biological value with other types of value: psychological, social or philosophical. I clearly distinguish the different types of value. I also clearly say what a value is relative to. It is biologically bad for an oak tree if I cut it down. It is not bad for me to cut the tree down, or bad for the cosmos. Biological value is relative to an organism. Psychological value is relative to a mind.

Again, see What is Value?.

I use the metaphor “spinning wheels” to describe behaviors that were once connected to adaptive consequences, but have been detached by modern technology. Birth control, for example, detaches the adaptive consequence of sex (making babies) from the emotional experience of sex. It creates what I call “an emotional illusion”. People are using certain technologies, such as birth control, to “put themselves up on blocks”, so they go through emotional cycles without making biological progress.

Is Conundrum making a counter-argument to anything I have said? No, of course not. He’s just babbling. He’s also lying to his audience, by misrepresenting my views in his paraphrases.

Here, we’re challenging the premise of the argument by pointing out that the framework of evolution itself does not provide a basis for assigning any evaluative judgments. We emphasize that the concept of success or failure is more applicable to human subjective perspectives and societal norms rather than to the process of evolution. This is done by shedding light on the distinction between scientific descriptions of evolution and subjective value judgments.

You’re not challenging anything, Conundrum.

Biology has a clear standard of value, and that standard is reproduction, which is the basis of natural selection. I am not conflating that with psychological value or any other type of value.

In his presentation of my views, Conundrum omits the distinctions that I make between different types of value. This is blatantly dishonest.

THERE IS NO PURPOSE IN EVOLUTION

The biggest error BG makes is at the very foundation of his entire argument. He thinks that our actions serve the purpose of reproduction, because he wrongly believes that evolution has built animals with a purpose — the purpose to reproduce. This is a complete misunderstanding of evolution. Evolution is not a purpose-driven process. Quite the contrary! The genius idea behind evolution through natural selection is that there are no goals, there is no design, no plan, no purpose. New forms of life constantly appear, all without these things. Natural selection has no purpose and gives no purpose to its products — organisms. Species, too, have no transcendent purpose. This is the beauty of the theory of evolution, which BG fails to grasp.

In this passage, Conundrum “corrects” my false understanding of evolution. He informs me that “Evolution is not a purpose-driven process. Quite the contrary!”.

Have I ever said that evolution has a purpose? No.

Again, Conundrum is lying to his audience.

Evolution has no purpose, but it creates beings (not just animals) that have purposes. An organism has the purpose of reproduction, because its form was selected to have that effect. Evolution is the process by which biology emerges from physics, and value emerges from causality.

Clearly, Conundrum didn’t bother trying to understand my views before critiquing them. Or he’s just being dishonest. Even if it is a mistake, it comes from a place of dishonesty. He could have made the effort to understand my views. He could have listened or read more carefully. He could have quoted me, at least once or twice, instead of “summarizing” my beliefs in his words. He could have simply asked me what I believe, or had a voice discussion with me. But he is not interested in getting my views correct, even though he is supposedly “responding” to me.

And yes, a species does not have a purpose. Biological purpose resides at the level of the individual organism, or reproducing unit, to be more precise.

See Debunking the Selfish Gene.

The crucial conclusion is this: if there is no purpose in evolution, then there is no goal we could fail to achieve on the evolutionary ground, and there are no winners nor losers.

Your “crucial conclusion” is false. The absence of a cosmic purpose does not imply the absence of individual purposes. Evolution has no purpose, but it creates beings with purposes. Purpose emerges from causality by the process of evolution, as I have explained.

PURPOSE OF LIFE THROUGH PARENTING IS JUST A STORY

Many parents believe that being a parent is one of the most important aspects of who they are. People cannot handle the utter meaninglessness of the universe and of themselves, so they seek some purpose or meaning in parenthood. This delusion of meaning is usually taken for granted, left unexamined. Here, we see that BG is providing a grand story about some “natural purpose”, about “being what you are”, and about “the only source of value”. What for? It’s not “the truth”. It’s just a story… a “delusion”, if you will. But this sense of meaning of life that parents derive from having children is just a feeling — not an objective or transcendent purpose of life that undergirds biology.

Here Conundrum puts on his nihilist hat. Later, he puts on his transcendental meaning hat, as you will see.

Am I telling a “grand story”? No, I am telling the truth. You are a reproducing machine. That’s a scientific truth, not a fairy tale. You have a natural purpose. Value emerges from causality by evolution. Those are scientific truths.

I never claim that reproduction is a “transcendent” purpose. It is your biological purpose. There’s nothing transcendent about it. It is objective in the sense that it is a descriptively accurate claim about objective reality. If I say “the function of the heart is to pump blood”, that is a descriptively accurate claim, not a delusion or a story. Likewise, if I say “the purpose of an organism is to reproduce”, that is a descriptively accurate claim.

Reproduction is your biological purpose. Does it follow that you must adopt it as your subjective, philosophical purpose? No.

I’ve told this to Conundrum before, but he seems to have a bad memory (yes, “bad” in the biological sense), so I will repeat it here:

There is no a priori foundation for value. We are not compelled to accept any value premise. We are not forced to accept or reject life.

That was at the end of the video Efilism: Arguing the Argument. I repeated it to Conundrum in Responding to Conundrum (at the end).

I do not tell people comforting stories. I confront them with the abyss.

See The Nihilist and the Carpenter and What is the Abyss?.

As we will see, Conundrum has his own comforting narrative.

ON VALUE

According to BG, there is no other source of value in the universe other than reproduction. Only reproduction can create value out of causality, because reproduction is self-propelling. The cause and the effect are in a circle. And that’s what value is: when the effect becomes the cause.

This is such a weird conception of value. BG tries to win the argument by redefining basic terms. The term “value” can be understood morally, ethically, aesthetically, economically, etc. But this? The effect becoming the cause of the same type of effect? This is not value. This is just reproduction.

Value is not “when the effect becomes the cause”. Again, value is a good-bad axis. Value arises because of the loop of reproduction and the process of evolution. A biological form is selected to have a function, which is both the effect and the cause of the form’s existence in many individual instances. Reproductive fitness is the good-bad axis in biology, because it is the basis of selection. That axis has explanatory power.

I am not trying to win an argument by redefining terms. That’s a ridiculous lie.

I clearly distinguish the different types of value, and I define them, as any philosopher should. Ordinary terms, such as “value”, don’t have clear meanings in ordinary usage. In philosophical discourse, it is necessary to clearly define them. Yes, there are different types of value, such as moral value, monetary value, psychological value and biological value. And all the others emerge, one way or another, from biological value, which is the root of value.

IDEAS ON WHO WE ARE

Saying that we are just tubes with ganglia synchronizing muscle twitches for feeding and reproduction is, of course, reductive. It’s easy to assail this point.

There are a myriad of ways we can think of ourselves. I’ll briefly mention three of them. We can look at our physical or chemical makeup, we can look at our powers of abstract thought, and we can look at ourselves as self-maintaining systems.

First, the description of a human being as a tube with a ganglion comes from Watt’s story. It’s not my description. I riffed on it. It’s a good description, because it lays bare the essential properties of life.

Conundrum says that this description is “reductive”. What does that mean? All descriptions are “reductive”. It’s a hollow term. It’s a word people use to dismiss something without making an argument. It’s also a word people use to avoid looking at themselves honestly, in a scientific way.

So, how will Conundrum “assail this point”? Spoiler: He doesn’t. He just babbles.

Physics and chemistry

We can go down the complexity scale: we can easily show the simplicity of the human body, by considering it’s relatively simple chemical composition. We can say, a human body is just a composition of these proportions of such and such chemicals. Why shouldn’t we say we’re just a chemical soup?

Similarly, we can take a perspective not from biology or chemistry, but from physics. We could describe a human organism through physical laws. Why shouldn’t we say we’re just organizations of atoms following specific laws of physics?

Well, yes, we could describe the human body as a mass of various chemical compounds or elements. That would be a useful description if you need to burn a human body, or dissolve it in muriatic acid, or use it as feedstock to some chemical process.

If you are concerned with the trajectory of a human body when falling from an airplane, you might represent it in terms of mass, altitude, and cross-sectional area, and then plug those numbers into physics equations.

So, whether you adopt a certain description depends on what you are doing.

If you are thinking about the human condition or human nature, those descriptions are not very useful.

We are general purpose thinking machines

BG ignores one important point about the evolution of homo sapiens. Which is the fact that we have evolved a complex brain, which acts as a general purpose thinking organ. We think not only about immediate things to satisfy our desires, but we can also think about abstract things like mathematics, space travel, culture, civilization, rationality, logic, ethics. We are no longer constrained to having a rigid thinking patterns in our mental toolbox. We have a general purpose mind with which we create new thinking tools. We can think about ourselves for our own sakes.

How did I ignore that human beings have complex brains? Oh, that never happened. Conundrum is just lying and/or being an idiot, as usual.

Yes, we have complex brains. Yes, we can use those brains to do various things, if we are motivated (by our emotions) to do those things. The complex brain does not transcend biology. It does not give us some magical source of purpose or motivation.

The claims I made have nothing to do with “rigid thinking patterns” or what is in our “mental toolbox”. Regardless of its complexity or flexibility, the human brain is an evolved organ with a biological function.

The human brain isn’t much more complex in its structure than the brain of other mammals, or even the brain of a fish. It is bigger, and it has a big cerebral cortex. That’s what makes our thought and behavior more complex and flexible.

But again, complexity and flexibility do not transcend evolution. Those are evolved properties, selected because they contributed to reproductive fitness.

The brain is not a “general purpose thinking organ”. The brain evolved to generate adaptive behavior, not to think about random things. Some parts of the brain, such as the cerebral cortex, have relatively generic functions. Other parts, such as the emotions, have very specific functions. The brain as a whole has the specific function, within the body, of generating coordinated muscle twitches and glandular secretions. Thought is instrumental to that purpose. The brain thinks in order to generate muscle twitches and glandular secretions.

Conundrum says that we can “think about ourselves for our own sakes”. What does that mean? What is your “own sake”? He is implicitly assuming some standard of value — but what is it, and where does it come from?

Autopoietic systems

Some of the best ideas on what life is and what we are are based on the concept of autopoiesis. An autopoietic system is a system that maintains itself. It gathers energy and resources to build and replace its components, to repair those that break, to clean up, to act, etc. An autopoietic system is one that does not disintegrate but actively propels itself into the future. It struggles against entropy and the environment. Of note is the fact that this conceptualization of living systems doesn’t invoke the notion of reproduction. It’s for a very good reason: most life does not reproduce, but all life is a self-maintaining system.

I hate to break it to you, Conundrum, but you’re gonna die. You’re not a self-maintaining system. You’re a reproducing machine with a finite lifespan. You will disintegrate. No life form is a self-maintaining system. Organisms maintain themselves for a while, but not indefinitely.

By contrast, every life form is a reproducing machine. The form of every organism has been shaped by evolution to reproduce. It doesn’t follow that every organism succeeds at reproduction. Many fail. But every life cycle involves reproduction, or it would not exist.

We’re not just one thing

What the various ideas on what we are show is that it’s perfectly legitimate to conceptualize what we are in very different ways. Humans being reproducing machines is just one of many ways we think of living beings. It’s not a privileged position. Not in science, not in philosophy. We can, and we do, in fact, look at ourselves, and at life in general, from different perspectives.

Conundrum is trying to dodge the truth with flowery rhetoric and tactical nihilism.

Yeah, you can view something in different ways, but those views must be consistent with each other to be rational. So, you can view a person as a physical object, a material consisting of various chemicals, a reproducing machine, a member of a society, etc. — those are all consistent views.

There are “privileged” views: those that are accurate. There are also false views. For example, if you think of human beings as altruism machines, that is a false view. If you think of yourself as a transcendent being on a magical ponyride, that’s a false view.

WE CAN REBEL

A slave can rebel being a slave. We may be slaves to the passions, especially the passion for sex, but we can rebel. We can hack our own evolved system of desire, trick it into thinking that we are doing its bidding, that we are slaving away, while in reality we live by our own standards. We can live for ourselves rather than only for that particular part of ourselves.

In this metaphor, who is the master? Your passions? But your passions (your emotions) are part of you. They are not an external master that rules over you. They are inextricable from you. You can’t rebel against yourself. You might be able to exercise some conscious control over your emotions, but only if you want to, and that will ultimately comes from your emotions. All motivation comes from the motivation mechanism: the emotions.

See Lucifer’s Question and Cupcakes, Nails and Mouse Brains.

You can deceive your emotions in certain ways, such as using birth control. That creates an emotional illusion, which is a type of self-deception. But what is the point of doing that? To live by your “own” standards? Where do the standards come from?

Remember how Conundrum was mocking parents for deceiving themselves into believing that parenting is meaningful. What is he doing now? He is deceiving himself into believing that not having children is meaningful: that it is some kind of brave rebellion against an oppressive master. That is his little story that comforts him and hides the abyss.

Conundrum says that we can “live for ourselves”? But what does it mean to live “for yourself”?

Nature is not your friend. Nature, through your cravings, pushes you into doing various things. But they are not necessarily good for you or for others.

Earlier, Conundrum was accusing me of anthropomorphizing nature. But he is such a sloppy, lazy thinker (who has no real interest in philosophy) that he has already forgotten about that, and is now being a blatant hypocrite.

Nature is not your friend, and nature is not your enemy. Nature is reality.

Nature doesn’t “push” you through your cravings. Conundrum is not only anthropomorphizing nature, he is also externalizing his emotions, pretending that his cravings are not really his.

But of course your cravings are yours. Your emotions are an intrinsic part of you, not something outside you that pushes on you. Your desires are generated by mental processes that are intrinsic to you. You might think of the content of mind (conscious judgments, thoughts, feelings, perceptions) as something separate from the mind itself, but the content of mind is generated by the mental processes that constitute the mind. That is you.

Conundrum says that nature pushes you into doing things that are not “necessarily good for you or others”. By what standard of value are they not “good”? What is this “good”, Conundrum? How would you know if something is good for you or not? By what standard would you evaluate it? Is this standard external to you — something from outside the brain? Or is it internal? Either way, how is it outside nature?

Conundrum takes value for granted, even though he rejects value when he wears his nihilist hat.

Why shouldn’t we rebel and take responsibility for ourselves? Will nature get mad? Even if she does, so what?

I didn’t tell you what to do. You can adopt this silly pose as a “rebel” against yourself, or against nature, all you want. It doesn’t change what you are. Nature won’t “get mad”. Nature will just eliminate the genes that make people “rebel” against their natural purpose. Eventually, there will be no more “rebels”.

THE “SO WHAT?” OBJECTION

The overarching point is this: all that you do is motivated by desires that evolved to make you reproduce. The obvious question is, of course, so what?

“So what?” is not a counter-argument. It’s just saying that you don’t care. Someone could explain relativity theory to you, and you could say “So what?”. It’s not an objection. In this context, it’s a non sequitur.

For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that only reproduction is the source of value. Nothing else we do has any value. He who does not reproduce has no value. OK, so what? Why would I care for this value in the reproductive sense? I could still be doing my things, completely ignoring the only “value” there is. I don’t see a problem with that. There is nothing there that puts any obligation or requirement on me to act in line with that alleged reproductive purpose. I simply choose to act otherwise, not caring about the “ultimate purpose of life” and that that my life has no value according to some interpretation of evolution. Why would I care about some externally imposed meaning that has not been rationally justified to me? I don’t.

As I have said before, you are not compelled to accept or reject any standard of value. That’s the abyss. Psychologically, you will make value judgments, because that is your nature. You can’t escape from that. Philosophically, you are free to question any standard of value. It follows that you are not rationally compelled to accept any standard of value.

For example, Inmendham believes that we are rationally compelled to accept hedonism and altruism. He is wrong. Those are assumptions. They can be rationally questioned and rejected.

HOW CAN WE SAY THAT THE WORLD IS TERRIBLE?

What is the ground of saying that the world is horrible? BG says that this is only a lie that we have souls and that there is genuine kindness and love. But a pessimist doesn’t have to believe in souls or “genuine kindness”. Not at all.

I didn’t say that there is no genuine kindness and love. That was the character in Watts’ story. I said that there is genuine kindness and love, but it’s not altruism or magical spirit dust. Love and kindness are evolved emotional responses that have selfish reproductive functions. That’s what I said.

BG says that the pessimist evaluates the world from the perspective of some ideal world, takes the ideal as the standard, and then says that the world should be like his imagined utopia. This need not be the case. The pessimist doesn’t even need to use any “shoulds”, but instead he can simply evaluate the world from the perspective of sentient beings or how the world is for these creatures.

Yes, the pessimist was disillusioned about reality, but keeps the illusion as an ideal, and then judges reality for not conforming to the illusion. Also, he does not understand the basis of his rejection of reality: that the value standard was a lie to begin with — “camouflage”, as Watts puts it.

Conundrum says that the pessimist can “simply evaluate the world from the perspective of sentient beings”. What does that mean? He is not explicit, but he is invoking (very vaguely) hedonism and/or hedonic utilitarianism as a value standard.

Conundrum is ignoring the context: that I was talking about the pessimist in Watts’ story, who reacts in horror to the view of life as tubes with teeth. Watts’ pessimist is not horrified by suffering, but by the worm-eat-worm nature of life: the selfishness of life, the brutality of life, and the lack of a cosmic purpose. Conundrum, although he has no consistent worldview, seems to believe in hedonic utilitarianism (although he is not consistent, because he also believes that life has no purpose/meaning). There are different versions of pessimism.

But the same basic critique applies to the hedonist or hedonic utilitarian. He grew up believing that life was mostly happy, and that he could attain happiness through his actions, and/or that he should try to make others happy. At some point in his life, he became disillusioned. He became aware of all the suffering in life. This disillusionment horrified him, and he now rages against life for not being happy, as if life was supposed to be happy. He rejects the illusion as descriptive, but retains it as normative.

Conundrum doesn’t seem to grasp that the value standard of hedonism (or hedonic utilitarianism) has no more rational justification than any other value standard. No one is compelled to accept it. It can be questioned and rejected.

Yes, if you adopt the standard of hedonism (pleasure is intrinsically good, pain is intrinsically bad, nothing else has intrinsic value), and you also believe that there is more pain than pleasure in life, you can derive “life is bad”. But that conclusion depends on the assumption of hedonism, which nobody is rationally compelled to accept. (One can also question the claim that there is more pain than pleasure.)

If you combine an altruism assumption with some version of hedonism, you get hedonic utilitarianism. You can craft various theories of personal and moral value. They will all depend on assumptions. None is uniquely rational.

Clearly, Conundrum does not understand this. I think he believes that sentience is the ultimate source of value. But he also rejects any source of meaning/value, in other contexts. Also, he rejects being a “slave to the passions”, even though hedonism situates value in emotional experience, aka “passions”. Conundrum’s belief system is an inconsistent mish-mash. That’s what happens when you don’t think critically about your own beliefs.

Moreover, what would even be the motivation for imagining such an ideal world? If I had not judged the world as bad, why would I think of a better one? That’s the thing, I first have to condemn the world to get a motive to construe something that would not be so bad.

What is the motivation for imagining an ideal world? In Watts’ story, the ideal is camouflage. It hides the real nature of the entropy tubes from each other and from themselves, to some extent. People generate social delusions, such as morality and religion, due to social feedback.

You could argue that those delusions are “motivated” (metaphorically) by what they hide. However, that motivation does not have to be present in most people. It can be an emergent shared preference.

For example, the topic of death makes people uncomfortable, so they don’t talk about it. They self-censor, because they want social approval, not disapproval. This creates a general taboo on the topic, and a collective blindness toward death. People then make up lies about death, such as that we go to heaven when we die. This becomes the socially acceptable discourse on the topic. Instead of saying “He died”, people say “He went to a better place”. A child growing up in this culture will be somewhat ignorant and deceived about death. He will have a comforting illusion that hides reality. That illusion is shared and validated by others, which makes it culturally stable.

Then, a thoughtful person starts pondering death, and sees through the illusion. That’s like the character in Watts’ story. He sees through the veil of illusion and ignorance about the nature of life. He sees that we are tubes that consume other tubes, and make copies of ourselves. He rages against this truth, because he has internalized the illusion as a value standard. He rejects it as descriptive, but accepts it as normative.

Many people are shocked that the universe does not conform to their moral standards. They don’t understand that morality is a delusion. Then, they discover that the universe is not “good”, but they don’t understand that “good” (moral good) is a delusion. So, they rage.

See Circles of Order and Chaos (video), or read the essay in On the Edge.

Now, let’s address the more important issue. How does Conundrum judge the world at all? He says that he must condemn the world to have an ideal vision of it, but this makes no sense. It is a vacuous circle. You can’t condemn the world for not conforming to an ideal unless you already have the ideal.

More specifically, you need a standard of value to make a value judgment. By what standard of value does Conundrum judge the world? What makes his standard the right standard? Or is it just a “delusion of meaning”?

Recall that Conundrum said this before, when he was mocking people who find meaning in parenthood:

People cannot handle the utter meaninglessness of the universe and of themselves, so they seek some purpose or meaning in parenthood. This delusion of meaning is usually taken for granted, left unexamined.

Conundrum, if there is no meaning, then you can’t judge the world as bad or good.

You haven’t examined your own delusion of meaning. You take it for granted, as a presupposition, when you speak. That’s why you don’t see the need to specify the value standard when you make value judgments. You presuppose it, as an unexamined assumption.

Your delusion of meaning is (to put it concisely) hedonism and altruism.

It’s very typical of people, especially in ideological discourse, to take their own assumptions for granted, while applying extreme skepticism to the assumptions of others. Philosophy requires being critical about one’s own beliefs first and foremost.

Philosophy is not an ego contest, nor an ideological contest. It is a good faith rational inquiry into the human condition. Of course, we’re human, and so other motives are always present. But when those motives predominate, it ceases to be philosophy. Real philosophy begins as a personal inquiry into the human condition.

Conclusion

BlitheringGenius puts a bold claim: that reproduction is the sole purpose and value in life. A closer look reveals major cracks in the foundation of his argument. Firstly, his argument hinges on redefining core concepts like “value” to fit his narrative. Secondly, there is no “success” in evolution in the way we normally understand it. Thirdly, there is no purpose in life, or at the very least, one cannot be gleaned from theory of evolution, since it’s a totally blind process.

I’ve never said anything like “reproduction is the sole purpose and value in life”. So, once again, Conundrum is lying.

He claims to have revealed cracks in the foundation of my argument. There are no cracks, and there is no “foundation” either. I don’t believe in a “foundation”, in the philosophical sense. We are floating in the abyss.

In the videos he is supposedly responding to, I comment on aspects of the human condition. Both videos have (as a premise) that reproduction is the biological purpose of life. That premise is not an assumption in my worldview. It is an implication of the theory of evolution, which I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about, and (more recently) writing about.

So, Conundrum doesn’t even understand the content of the videos that he is pretending to respond to. He summarized my views incorrectly. He presumed to “correct” my understanding of evolution, by telling me, in a very condescending way, that evolution has no purpose. But I have never said that evolution has a purpose. In fact, I have said many times that evolution has no purpose.

Conundrum claims that I redefine “value” to fit my narrative. That’s a ridiculous lie. I carefully define the terms that I use, which is a necessary part of philosophical discourse. I carefully distinguish between different meanings of “value”. I don’t take my value standards for granted, as Conundrum does. I am actually doing philosophy, not playing rhetorical games.

There is a notion of “success” in biology, because evolution creates beings with purposes, as I have explained. The purposes of individual organisms do not come from some higher purpose. There is no cosmic purpose. Value emerges from causality by the process of evolution and loop of reproduction, as I have explained. All other types of value derive from biological value.

So, of course, Conundrum hasn’t made a single valid criticism of my views.

And finally, humans possess a remarkable capacity for complex thought and self-awareness, allowing us to transcend our primal urges, and become what we want to be.

Now, we get the flowery rhetoric. This is Conundrum’s little story that he tells himself: his delusion of meaning.

The big brain doesn’t make us magical beings. We have only one source of motivation: the emotions. You can disparage some emotions as “primal urges”, but all emotions are mechanisms that evolved to make us reproduce: hunger, thirst, lust, love, hate, curiosity, etc. They were all created by evolution. They were all selected to improve reproductive fitness.

You are a reproducing machine, whether you like it or not, and whether you “rebel” against it or accept it.

Can we “become what we want to be”? To some extent, perhaps. You can act toward what you want, and be more or less successful at it. For example, I want to be a successful reproducing machine, so I acted toward that desire by having children.

You can’t become something other than what you essentially are. You are a reproducing machine. You can reproduce or masturbate.

So, while our biology plays a role, it doesn’t set out a purpose for us. We have the agency to forge our own meaning. We can choose to “hack” our desires, pursuing goals that resonate with us.

Biology defines the biological purpose of life for us, but you are subjectively free to reject it, just as you are subjectively free to reject any value standard. That is the abyss. There is no uniquely rational value standard.

Do we have the “agency to forge our own meaning”? Again, to some extent. You can’t become something that you aren’t. You would also need meaning to forge meaning. Conundrum doesn’t understand the circularity involved in “self-hacking” or (in other words) philosophy. You need a value to choose a value. That’s the abyss. If you try to hack your desires, you must have a goal in hacking them, and that goal is a value standard.

For example, you could adopt reproduction as your subjective purpose, and then try to hack your desires to reflect that purpose, more than they otherwise would. There are limits to that, because we aren’t philosophical robots. But there is some top-down control over emotions and desires. However, that top-down control is ultimately motivated by emotions. There’s no other source of motivation. You must want to control your wants.

Look at how Conundrum resorts to silly psychobabble, such as “pursuing goals that resonate with us”. What does “resonate” mean? You’re not a tuning fork. We pursue goals that we want. Goals/desires are generated by the brain, and they get their force from emotions. The psychobabble is part of the veil that Conundrum uses to hide the abyss. It is part of his delusion of meaning.

Finding fulfillment in creativity, knowledge, or simply living a life true to ourselves is completely fine, and there is no God of Evolution who would condemn us for our sins of not procreating.

First, “completely fine” is a value judgment, so it requires a value standard. What is the value standard? If the value standard is reproduction, then it’s not completely fine to masturbate your life away. If it is something else, then it might be fine — but what is Conundrum’s unexamined value standard? Probably hedonism, in which case all his rhetoric about not being a “slave to the passions” is very hypocritical.

Second, you’ll never “find fulfillment” in anything. That’s just psychobabble. Emotions are always generating motivation, so you’re never satisfied or “fulfilled”.

Third, what does it mean to live a life true to oneself? Trying to be a successful reproducing machine seems more “true to yourself” than any other way of life, because it accepts and embraces your true nature and natural purpose. But of course, the phrase is just more psychobabble, used to create an illusion of meaning.

Yeah, there is no god of evolution to condemn you for not reproducing. However, evolution is the closest thing to god that exists. It created the human form. It defines the frame of our existence. Those who “rebel” against their natural purpose do not have descendants. In a sense, they have no “afterlife”. Whatever makes them “rebel” will be swept away by evolution over time. Evolution judges us, in that sense.

We are much more than just “reproducing machines.” It’s just a biological function. It’s not our purpose, it’s not a measure of our value.

No, we are not much more than reproducing machines. That’s exactly what we are. Every aspect of the human form has a biological function that is instrumental to reproduction.

We have the freedom to explore, create, and forge our own path, defining value and meaning on our own terms.

Again, we have some freedom, but we’re not magical beings. We don’t transcend evolution. You can’t escape from your essential nature. Can you define value and meaning on your own terms? Well, yes, in a sense. You can adopt a value standard, from your position in the abyss. That would be a choice, not a “foundation”.

I adopted the value standard of reproduction, after a long contemplation of the abyss. I chose to “hack my desires” in the direction of being a successful reproducer, and I have done that.

So, I have actually done what Conundrum claims we can do: exercise my rational agency to “forge” my own value standard. Conundrum, on the other hand, takes value for granted and hides the abyss behind a veil of comforting words.

After all, the most valuable experiences might be the ones we create ourselves.

Aw look. The entropy worm is oozing camouflage from its orifice. How cute.