Cosmos and Psyche
Others may or may not agree but as I see it a common view in our modern world is that "meaning" is entirely subjective. "Out there" is a barren Cosmos, bereft of meaning in and of itself - mere matter in motion obeying impersonal laws.
Maybe Philip.Larkin captures the mood:-
[i]Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.[/i]
Nature moves on, unconcerned as we live and die, our meanings simply subjective. We must be satisfied, satisfied that any meaning and purpose the human mind perceives in the universe does not exist intrinsically in the universe but is constructed and projected onto it by the human mind.
A philosopher, Richard Tarnas, says this:-
[i]Might not this be the final, most global anthropocentric delusion of all? For is it not an extraordinary act of human hubris — literally, a hubris of cosmic proportions — to assume that the exclusive source of all meaning and purpose in the universe is ultimately centered in the human mind, which is therefore absolutely unique and special and in this sense superior to the entire cosmos? To presume that the universe utterly lacks what we human beings, the offspring and expression of that universe, conspicuously possess? To assume that the part somehow radically differs from and transcends the whole? To base our entire world view on the a priori principle that whenever human beings perceive any patterns of psychological or spiritual significance in the nonhuman world, any signs of interiority and mind, any suggestion of purposefully coherent order and intelligible meaning, these must be understood as no more than human constructions and projections, as ultimately rooted in the human mind and never in the world? "
[/i]
Do "we" assume such things?
What (if we do) is the result of assuming such things?
What are the alternatives to such assumptions?
A suggestive quote from the world of zen:-
[i]If consciousness is confined to the skull, how can joy exist? [/i]
(A zen master)
Maybe Philip.Larkin captures the mood:-
[i]Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.[/i]
Nature moves on, unconcerned as we live and die, our meanings simply subjective. We must be satisfied, satisfied that any meaning and purpose the human mind perceives in the universe does not exist intrinsically in the universe but is constructed and projected onto it by the human mind.
A philosopher, Richard Tarnas, says this:-
[i]Might not this be the final, most global anthropocentric delusion of all? For is it not an extraordinary act of human hubris — literally, a hubris of cosmic proportions — to assume that the exclusive source of all meaning and purpose in the universe is ultimately centered in the human mind, which is therefore absolutely unique and special and in this sense superior to the entire cosmos? To presume that the universe utterly lacks what we human beings, the offspring and expression of that universe, conspicuously possess? To assume that the part somehow radically differs from and transcends the whole? To base our entire world view on the a priori principle that whenever human beings perceive any patterns of psychological or spiritual significance in the nonhuman world, any signs of interiority and mind, any suggestion of purposefully coherent order and intelligible meaning, these must be understood as no more than human constructions and projections, as ultimately rooted in the human mind and never in the world? "
[/i]
Do "we" assume such things?
What (if we do) is the result of assuming such things?
What are the alternatives to such assumptions?
A suggestive quote from the world of zen:-
[i]If consciousness is confined to the skull, how can joy exist? [/i]
(A zen master)
