Intelligibility without meaning: Nagel, and the cosmos

Cosmic questions

Questions regarding the meaning of life seem to become more problematic as their scope broadens. At the limit are those we can call ‘cosmic questions’. These concern the nature of the relationship between the various attributions of meaningfulness we make here on earth in daily life and the cosmos.

For considered as a whole, our universe, the cosmos, can seem anomalous in this respect. We may wonder, for example, whether our local determinations of meaningfulness, those we adhere to right now that embed connotations of purpose and value, can have any application to it. Or, disregarding that issue, we may be uncertain whether those determinations still hold up or will hold up, in the light of what we know, have been told, and might yet discover, about this vast, complex, perhaps infinite, entity.

Cosmic questions are difficult not least because we are unsure how to handle them. Indeed, the measure of difficulty involved can itself be taken, and has been taken, as a sign there is something fundamentally wrong with such questions, that perhaps expanding their scope so extensively outstrips conceivable criteria for answering them, so they are not really genuine questions. But, this seems too complacent in the face of a lingering disquietude: we feel that we ought to be able not only to make sense of the cosmos, but also have some meaningful relationship to it. This is intimately connected with the general quest for intelligibility that Thomas Nagel’s ‘largest question of philosophy’ invokes, though he alleges a difference here, as will later become apparent.

It seems we want to understand the cosmos in terms that can be incorporated into, or at least made compatible with, our understanding of what makes life meaningful for us. Implicit within the unease here, perhaps repressed, is a worry that no doubt partly explains why it tends to linger: we would like, but appear to lack and do not know how to obtain, some assurance that the cosmos does not, and will not, constitute a threat, if only in its blank indifference, to what we regard as the meaningfulness of our lives. One of the quirky features of our tendency to question the meaning of life is that we find the human context unsatisfactory in that regard while at the same time finding the extra-human context disappointing, if not outright hostile.

When we step far enough beyond the normal human realm, meaning as we understand it disappears and there seem to be no resources for its resurrection. Meaningfulness strikes us as intrinsically provincial in that respect. However, our lack of confidence in the local human context as a sole ground or foundation of meaning still encourages us to push beyond its domain.

Of course, in the past confidence in local meaning was boosted by our perception of where we stood in the cosmic scheme of things. The universe was then the best place to look for confirmation of the meaning of our existence. We regarded ourselves as being at its centre not just geographically, but in having a special place within it. It was built with us in mind — built for us, if you like. ^[1] Our lives were therefore infused with meaning on the grandest scale. They had, it seemed, cosmic significance. Since the Copernican revolution, science has gradually convinced us to set that kind of story aside.

Who is uneasy?

In these opening remarks, there is an assumption of reciprocity regarding the audience, those who might be listening: they identify with the embedded ‘we/us’ claims to the extent they can recognize the remarks are spoken to them, or for them, with an expectation of giving voice to their concerns or something recognizably similar. This means that broadly speaking they are denizens of modernity. As such, leaving aside the religiously inclined and a few eccentrics, they have, and can make, no whole-hearted investment in conceptions of the cosmos that allocate them an elevated, especially meaningful, place within it, and certainly they can seek no comfort in the thought that in their meaningful endeavors the universe is, as Bernard Williams once pithily put it, cheering them on (Williams, 2006, pp. 135-52). Even if they take a benign view of the cosmos, they have no reasons to think that it has a benign view of them, or any view for that matter.

All this is obviously true for ancient, myth-based cosmologies and any blatantly anthropocentric take on the cosmos. The presumed audience will generally tend to accept this or at least be disinclined to deny it. But, there are likely to be problems of unease even for someone with a religious outlook that in their eyes has retained at least enough surface credibility for them to be able to subscribe to it unflinchingly in the midst of modernity’s secular scientific onslaught: heaven awaits, meanwhile, although the deity created it with presumably the best intentions, the vast cosmos still looks cold, dark, and uncaring. Indeed, given its unimaginable scale, the very existence of the cosmos seems to lack an explanation or form of justification that encourages optimism about its meaning as a whole or a purpose behind it that connects with what is important to us.

The physicist Lee Smolin is no doubt right in suspecting that “the image of our Earth as lost in a dead and hostile universe has fueled the pessimism” so prevalent in modern culture (he refers specifically to art and literature) (Smolin, 1998, p. 298).

Two responses

Having granted all this, it has been tempting for philosophers to respond by saying that the difficulties mentioned and the anxieties involved are the product of particular misconceptions. Concern about a possible mismatch between the meaningfulness of human life and the cosmos is then considered to be a problem for certain people on account of those misconceptions. It is their problem, and not a problem. Who are they? And, what are their misconceptions supposed to be?

They are, in fact, a sub-set of the denizens of modernity: those who supposedly have not woken up to some important implications of where they are situated just by being situated within modernity. ^[2] I want to consider two different responses to where this is, and then discuss where Nagel stands with regard to them. To deal with these responses, is not to deal with a larger issue regarding cosmic questions: “Whose questions could they be?” But, that requires a larger canvas.

The first response assumes that these denizens of modernity are unaware of where they are philosophically speaking. This rather arrogant suggestion flows from a narrow approach to philosophy, fostered by the analytic tradition, according to which unease, certainly any intellectual unease, regarding the relationship between the cosmos and the meaning we assign to our lives, or life itself, ^[3] is misplaced. We deal with the cosmos causally when acting upon, and within, it and what we do in that regard is guided by our conception of its nature, one that has evolved into an elaborate and largely reliable scientific conception. The notion, or notions, of meaningfulness we ascribe to, and apply within, the lives we are living have no useful place in that conception. ^[4] Furthermore, on this understanding, the relationship the cosmos has to us is also causal, and as such entirely physical. It has no say in how we assess meaningfulness. Indeed, as far as our ideas of meaningfulness are concerned, the cosmos is irrelevant.

Analytic philosophers have generally not taken much interest in the relationship between meaningfulness and the cosmos. Starting with the positivists and then the ordinary language school, they have tended to argue that attempts to talk about the meaning of the cosmos or about whether it can somehow confer, deter, or threaten meaning, inevitably collapse into incoherence because the significance of words that convey our perceptions of meaningfulness in all its shades is inextricably tied to the nuances of far more parochial settings. These words do all the work they can do there. The analytic tradition has continued to develop increasingly sophisticated accounts of language which could, no doubt, be used to refine this line of argument. But, time is not spent on promoting, or even discussing, these accounts for that purpose because inquiries about the significance of the cosmos have been delegated to science, where they are thought to rightfully belong.

Why is this first response arrogant? It is arrogant because it is insensitive and tantamount to a rebuke, to saying those who are now bothered by questions regarding meaning and the cosmos ought to have been aware that philosophers some time ago discovered good reasons not to be concerned about these questions. Such people therefore stand accused, at least implicitly, of making two mistakes: not only of misusing language, but also of failing to keep up with the philosophical progress that could have prevented them from doing so in the first place.

The accusation is unwarranted on both counts. It oversimplifies what is often going on when denizens of modernity experience unease about how they can fit their home-grown understanding of meaningfulness into their picture of the cosmos. This is not simply a case of them being linguistically careless, confused, or just deceived by bad questions. At the same time, the accusation disguises analytic philosophers’ own responsibility for their benightedness regarding the purported reasons not to feel such unease.

Although it has branched out in recent years to make more contact with other disciplines and have more direct relevance to ordinary life, analytic philosophy still tends to be narrow in the specialism of its approach and, as a result, in its purchase on the available audience, particularly so in the present case where on the rare occasions it speaks, it speaks to philosophers, and then invariably only to those within its own tradition.

Analytic philosophy is still dominant within most philosophy departments in Western countries, but the hegemony it enjoys cannot realistically license any expectations that on most topics it finds interesting, a wider audience ought to be, or even could be, cognizant of its findings. In short, the dismissive assumption that someone who feels unease about questions concerning meaning and the cosmos just does not know where they are philosophically speaking is hubristic. Analytic philosophers have generally not been in the business of making readily available and easily readable maps of where that is.

The second response about the implications of being located within modernity is more responsive to a larger appreciation of what is likely to be going on when someone experiences unease about questions concerning the relationship between meaning and the cosmos. For it recognizes they are not just out of touch with some isolated and relatively recent philosophical views on such questions, but are instead experiencing, as the literary critic Lionel Trilling once adroitly remarked, “the problematical kind of actuality we call history” (The New York Review of Books, April 7^th, 1975). That is to say, they find themselves positioned, socio-historically speaking, in a way that makes it difficult for them to conceive how the meaning they attach to their lives squares with the account of the universe which science, and indeed culture in general, reveals to them.

Specifically, this means they have not yet adopted the stance of radical self-reliance regarding matters of meaning that modernity ushered in. For they have not realized the degree to which they are, or have the capacity to be, not just consumers of pre-packaged meaning, but meaning-makers, answerable on such matters not to the cosmos, but only to fellow creators of meaning.

I am using the phrase ‘radical self-reliance’ as fast and loose shorthand for a large and variegated history, yet to be adequately written up. But, to get the hang of what it involves for present purposes, we do not need to wheel out its full pedigree or delve beyond the realms of philosophy where this history has actually played out. It should suffice to briefly thumbnail the role of three representative thinkers: Nietzsche, Sartre, and Richard Rorty.

Nietzsche paved the way for modernity’s secularism. He may have gained most notoriety for announcing the death of God, but his most successful paving was carried out by means of more subtle intellectual spadework. For, Nietzsche unearthed, and made dramatically transparent, what might best be termed a performative contradiction at the very heart of the ethos of Christianity. This was not just an internal, doctrinal matter, a clash between particular elements, but rather a conflict between the whole of its teaching and the active search for truth that, under its guidance, believers must undertake.

Nietzsche likened Christianity to a ‘Platonism for the people’ in the sense that its cosmology also invoked a supersensible world. Moreover, as Heidegger rightly pointed out, Nietzsche used “the names ‘God’ and “Christian God’ to indicate the supersensory world in general” (Heidegger, 1950, p. 162). Once the earnest search for truth reveals this cosmology and its ‘other worldly’ appeals to be bankrupt, as Nietzsche believed it must, the morality that depends on it loses any justification, as does all coherent sense of what is meaningful and important in life. The end result is nihilism: a world devoid of value, and hence meaning. Nietzsche’s remedy was the creation of new values by those who both understand where they are socio-historically speaking and have the will to undertake this task: the Ubermenschen. ^[5] The solution was tainted with elitism, not entirely against Nietzsche’s wishes to say the least, but it represented one of the first steps on the path to radical self-reliance for all.

Jean Paul Sartre was too enamored with Marxism to take Nietzsche’s solution seriously, ^[6] but most likely absorbed the antireligious thrust of his views on nihilism through reading Heidegger who certainly did. In any case, Sartre’s insistence that all human beings possess an unrestricted freedom that cancels out any attempt to define their essence amounted to a democratization of Nietzsche’s conception of the Ubermensch, the person who has the requisite knowledge and will to create new values. Sartre’s idea of absolute freedom gained little traction within philosophy, not even French philosophy. ^[7] Nevertheless, it had a broader cultural impact through the existentialist notion of authenticity that flowed from it, making the thought that people have autonomous control over the role meaningfulness plays in their lives more accessible and attractive.

Richard Rorty went even further along the democratizing route Sartre had opened up. And, it was in his thoroughly anti-authoritarian hands that the conception of radical self-reliance took on a finished shape. He sketched out an appealing portrait of a post-philosophical, liberal utopia (see Rorty, 1989), the inhabitants of which realize that they are “merely finite, with no links to something beyond” (Rorty, 1982, xlii-xliii), that where meaningfulness is concerned, they are beholden only to each other and the relevant social practices they have created.

This response needs to be fleshed out of course, but in essence, it offers a general socio-historical explanation of why someone might feel unease about cosmic questions. And, rather than suggesting they are somehow making a mistake or missing out on certain technical philosophical developments, it points them towards an understanding of how meaningfulness is created that does not depend on the participation of a divine power or the universe itself.

Nagel’s elevation of attitude and temperament

Thomas Nagel has turned out to be an interesting exception here. He is one of the few analytical philosophers who have expressed serious interest in our relationship to the cosmos. ^[8] At the same time, he feels uneasy about that relationship and neither of the responses just outlined cuts any ice with him. They do not speak to where he seems to think he, along with many others, ^[9] is situated within modernity and, indeed, within the cosmos.

He does not agree that his unease is caused by him not knowing where he is philosophically speaking in the manner suggested in the first response or being out of step with the cultural realities of modernity as implied by the second. Neither response caters for a certain kind of attitude or temperament that yearns for a relationship to the cosmos they rule out.

Nagel has long been a highly respected figure within analytic philosophy, and is well aware of the brisk way in which it has generally dealt with cosmic questions:

Sense, in this [analytic] outlook, is something to be found within individual human lives, human creativity, human interactions, and human institutions. To take the quest for sense outside the boundaries of those human purposes and aims relative to which all judgments of sense or senselessness must be made is an error, and an error of a philosophically familiar type: an attempt to extend a concept beyond the conditions that give it meaning. (Nagel, 2010, p. 7)

But, he does not try to argue that there is some flaw internal to this outlook, that it embeds a straightforward philosophical error of its own. For, he is not attempting to absolve himself from a mistake that the outlook purports to identify.

Nagel simply sets aside that outlook instead of trying to refute it because his worry is pitched at a higher level of abstraction and generality, one where analytic philosophers prefer not to operate. It is rather that he believes they habitually ignore what he regards to be an important and unique opportunity—namely, to provide secular consolation for the unavailability of a religious answer to his own cosmic question, the one that makes him uneasy:

How can one bring into one’s individual life a recognition of one’s relation to the universe as a whole, whatever that relation is? (Nagel, 2010, p. 5)

This is a rather strange formulation. For the open-ended specification “whatever that relation is” surely leaves room for too much, including the possibility that the relationship in question is one we cannot, or will not want to, ‘bring into our individual lives’. Moreover, the answer to his question, if there is a unique one, could have nothing to do with the secular consolation he is looking for. It might be discovered, for example, that the best way to ‘bring a recognition’ of our relationship to the cosmos into our lives just involves accepting a scientific account of it, one that somehow makes its existence more intelligible to us. But, Nagel is after far more than that.

In seeking more, he also steps beyond the reach of the second response. The relationship his cosmic question seeks cannot be formed in the ways it identifies. Moreover, he is very resistant to the idea of radical self-reliance because he believes, contra Rorty in particular, we are in some way answerable to the cosmos, and hence inextricably dependent upon it where meaningfulness is concerned. This requires some unpacking, and to do that, we need to back up a bit.

Nagel’s cosmic question was not provoked by curiosity about the nature of the cosmos. It was provoked by his realization that the demands of what he calls ‘the religious temperament’ (0r ‘attitude’) do not subside even when it is agreed that religion cannot meet those demands.

Again, this is strange. Why does Nagel give any philosophical credence to the dictates of this temperament? It is difficult to see how it can make any genuine call upon us when the answers to the questions that presumably show why it is religious are not answerable in religious terms. Nagel’s own cosmic question is his prime example of such a question, but he also asks “Is there a way to live in harmony with the universe, and not just in it?” (Nagel, 2010, p. 5).

If we look closely at what Nagel is expecting to attain from purely secular answers to these questions or to even be able to engage with them, we can see that he is holding on to some religious, 0r quasi-religious, aspirations that cannot be satisfied on secular terms. They are smuggled into, or assumed to be still present in, the space that he insists “remains open if we deny that religion can make sense of everything” (Nagel, 2010, p.4). He speaks, for example, of a Platonic “yearning for cosmic reconciliation”, (Nagel, 2010, p.3) and, more generally, in a manner typically associated with idealism, as if human beings can somehow encompass the whole universe in their consciousness—or at least gain solace from the thought that it encompasses them in ways that are essential to its own development, so that they are not isolated entities within it. At one point, he ponders whether we might be representatives of existence itself, of “the whole of it”, because “it is present to our consciousness”. From this he concludes it may be that “our existence is not merely our own” (Nagel, 2010, p.6).

Nagel fails to make any clear distinctions between: (1) wishful thinking about our relationship to the cosmos and (2) thinking that, after taking into account what we know about the cosmos, considers realistic possibilities regarding our relationship to it. His approach endorses aspirations that are entangled with various, not always compatible, philosophical positions, including idealism, as we have said, a Cartesian conception of mind, and anti-reductionism. But, we do not need to untangle these. What makes the aspirations problematic is the way in which their philosophical content has been contrived, and remains, at such an immense distance from recent scientific accounts of the cosmos.

Those accounts are far from complete, and their theoretical content is not tightly tied to empirical confirmation. Nevertheless, they provide ample evidence the cosmos is so large and complex that the kind of hopes Nagel associates with the religious temperament are, so far as they make sense, futile. Smuggled in with the religious aspirations we mentioned, is an anachronistic conception of the cosmos that encourages, if not inspires, them. When we talk about the cosmos, or the universe considered as a whole as we put it earlier, we are not talking about something that is, or can be, present to consciousness, something that we can literally ‘have in mind’. If we want to consider the universe as a whole, then we need to take into account what science informs us about it, and as we said, the available scientific information is incomplete. It is too early, and might always be too early, ^[10] to seriously conjecture, as Nagel does, that “in each of us the universe has come to consciousness”, that we can sensibly think of ourselves as participating in “the life of the universe as a whole”. Speaking in this way is to indulge in what Nietzsche called “our ridiculous overestimation and misapprehension of consciousness” (Nietzsche, 1887, Bk. 1, §11, p.37). Looked at in its entirety, in so far as we are now able to do that, our conscious participation in the cosmos seems extremely marginal to its large scale activities.

Consciousness has cropped up in a tiny part of the universe and appears to be special to us in more than one sense. But, it might not be a special feature of the cosmos in any sense (or to the cosmos, if it has options in that respect—it might find black holes, dark matter, and so forth more special in the context of its complex evolution and overall activities). And, for us to think otherwise, to think of the universe as ‘coming to consciousness’ rather than consciousness simply occurring somewhere within its vast expanse, is to suffer from an inflated philosophical ego, the intellectual equivalent of the oceanic feelings that Freud debunked (Freud, 1930). It is not important to us when we reflect on our powers of self-reliance that the cosmos should be meaningful in any way that grounds, adds to, or supplements the meaningfulness of our lives, it is sufficient that we find it intelligible enough to live in. Comprehensibility in this instance should be understood pragmatically, as a form of ongoing adaptation to the world rather than as somehow fundamental to the nature of the universe as a whole.