My
previous riff on the possibility of a designed universe
considered what that might say about the designer. Would that be a
First Cause that created the
physical laws that seem to have governed the Big Bang and
subsequent evolution of the universe, or perhaps a “programmer”
using a preexisting set of tools to design a very elaborate
simulation? Thomas
Nagel
offered
instead
the concept of a design without a designer, one arising through a
somehow
ordered
process of
mutation and natural selection. He
opposed this to a teleologic
explanation (such as divine intervention
or
creationism)
or a
merely material and chance
elaboration
of physical
law. His
alternative
include “the constitutive possibility, in the character of the
elements of which the world is composed, of their combination into
living organisms with the properties of consciousness, action, and
cognition which we know they have.” (pg
93) This
“constitutive possibility” is in the same category as
mathematical truths. They
are just are, embedded in reality. The same can be said for moral
truths – such as the imperative not to harm other sentient
creatures – that are facts, he says, that we call values.
These
are accessible to consciousness. “We
exist in a world of values and respond to them through normative
judgements that guide our action…. The response to value seems only
to make sense as a function of the unified subject of consciousness….
Practical reasoning and its influence on action involve the unified
conscious subject who sees what he should do.” (pg
114-15 ) This gives consciousness
a hook
by
which to express free will. We chose
right or wrong. Nagel calls the whole process – the
evolution of life, rise of consciousness and emergent perception of
right and wrong – as
one “of the universe gradually waking up.” (pg
117)
The
emergent ability to perceive good and evil doesn’t mean an
automatic tendency toward the good. “No teleologic principle
tending towards the production of a single outcome seems suitable.
Rather, it would have to be a tendency toward the proliferation of
complex forms and the generation of multiple variations in the range
of possible complex systems.” (pg 122) According to Nagel,
teleology can be restated as “a cosmic predisposition to the
formation of life, consciousness, and the value [of what is good for
each creature] that is inseparable from them.” (pg 123)
I
like all this, it echoes Plato
and his notion of the Forms as the basis of reality, perceivable
through reason.
But
it begs the question of how and why there should be any “constitutive
possibilities” pre-baked into the creation of the universe. Nagel,
a self-declared atheist, wants to avoid the notion of any Devine
Designer. But it seems to beg the question of how to posit a design
without a designer. It violates Occam’s Razor. So I return to the
question of what sort of designer would set this universe spinning.
Perhaps Nagel here can point in the right direction. There does seem
to be a moral order to the universe as well as a governing set of
physical and mathematical laws (which we are still discovering). We
can, in fact, know good from evil. (Mere good
and bad
may vary according to the individual, group or civilization.) We
also have the free will to ignore this distinction and clearly human
history is full of examples of those who did and do.
A
while back, near
the start of my ruminations, I suggested that perhaps the
designer was a kind of cosmic Shakespeare, setting up the grandest
possible stage on which a myriad of actors could perform. Or
perhaps, out of loneliness, it formulated an elaborate simulation it
could inhabit in
the form of
individual conscious agents, bound
by time and space. I
don’t know but it’s been fun, at least for me, ruminating on it.
In the end, my own, I may, or may not, find out.
