An Exploration of Humanism via Oysterhood
I am reading through Daniel Klein's wonderful little book "Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live." Starting on page 81 he has a wonderful meditation on the David Hume quote “The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.” Klein makes a lot of great points there which lead back to meaningfulness and fulfillment in life, despite our existential smallness. I don't want to recount his points here (because he does a better job with his ideas than I would, and you should read the book). But I want to supplement his insights with my own wonderings as I read Hume's nihilist assessment of the importance of both man and oyster.
When Hume says this, does he mean here that only really "big" cosmic things matter? This seems to be absurd. For instance, a whole planet is a speck compared to the size of a star and its star system. A whole star system is a mere dot compared to a galaxy. A whole galaxy is just a pixel compared with the totality of reality (although I am sure I am missing some steps here, like galactic super-clusters and such). But even super-clusters do not have holistic effects on the rest of reality. They are insignificant in comparison, if "significance" here means something like "able to affect the whole". If something like "bigness" is required for something to be "important" then really nothing is important. Nothing at all. Not even galactic superclusters.
Perhaps Hume means instead that very small things cannot matter. Perhaps he allows agnosticism about whether really big things are important, but he is sure really small things do not matter. This seems absurd as well, and perhaps based on a verbal illusion. For many of us "small things cannot be significant" seems to make intuitive sense. But then see how silly it is when we try to apply this to other values. Would it make sense to say "small things cannot be beautiful"? How about "small things cannot be true"? Or "small things cannot be good"? Or even "small things cannot effect change in large systems"? All of these are patently false, and perhaps even dangerously false. If a host of other values apply to small things, why then would we exclude significance from small things?
Forget for a minute small truths that everything else builds on (perhaps the alphabet or 2+2). And forget for a minute all the good and beautiful small things, from magnified sand crystals to a baby's toes. Let's just focus on small things effecting change: From one bacteria, to one erring digit in a computer code, to one change in a genetic sequence, to one butterfly flapping its wings: All of these can have significant effects on large systems. It is true that "small" things cannot impact the totality of reality across all time. But that is true of all "big" things too. And if our peculiar definition of "important" is that a thing is only important if it impacts the totality of reality forever, then nothing is important, because nothing meets that bar except the totality of reality.
So it seems that insignificance being tied to "bigness" or "smallness" doesn't make much sense at all. It seems rather that tying significance to size is some kind of verbal spell that Hume cast on himself, and many who have read him. But its just that: A spell. A trick.
Because on a strict logical analysis: Either persons are part of the universe or they are not. If someone thinks persons are not part of the universe, I am not sure how to approach that idea. But if persons are part of the universe (which seems definitionally obvious to me), then definitionally, what matters to persons also matters to the universe. Persons are instruments through which the universe becomes aware of itself, and in persons the universe does unique things like mattering and valuing and imagining and loving and creating. So, if a person matters to other persons, or even matters to themselves, then they matter to the universe. And if they are significant and important to persons, then they are significant and important to the universe. And if they are extravagantly loved and cherished by persons, then they are extravagantly loved and cherished by the universe. Because persons are part of the universe, and the universe is conscious through persons.
So it seems to me that Hume is just plain wrong about how the universe views the importance of "a man" (i.e. a person). He might revise his thesis to say that a person doesn't matter across a large spatial swath of the universe, even if they do matter locally. Or perhaps that a person doesn't matter for a very long swath of time compared with the total amount of time. Yet even this might run afoul of the concept that time and space, as we conceive them, may only be artifacts of personal consciousness and not "objective" without persons to observe them. If this possible implication of quantum physics is real, then a lot more than value and importance may depend on personal consciousness. Everything we think of as "real" might depend on observers to "see" it, and persons to perceive it. If something like this is the case, then Hume's magical incantation of insignificance becomes significantly wrong.
But perhaps he was right about oysters. They don't matter, right? At least they are insignificant. We can all agree on this. Or can we? Ask the scientists who have spent their lives studying oysters, or the fishers who make their living from harvesting oysters, or the people wearing pearls made from oysters, or who enjoy eating oysters, or put oysters in their ponds and fish tanks. Oysters seem to be valued by a whole bunch of people who we would clearly categorize as persons (and remember, persons are part of the universe). Perhaps they are not valued as highly as other persons or pets or great works of art, but they are important to the universe, because they are important to persons.
Now, someone might object: I am focusing too much on oysters here. It was just a memorable turn of phrase by Hume. I should focus instead on the meaning-- the importance-- of his underlying point. And I am trying to do just that. Because his memorable quip only makes sense if he is trying to make a bigger point that only "big" things matter, or "small" things cannot be important, or that persons do not "count" as part of the universe when they think something is meaningful or important. And on all of these points, I have made my point: It is absurd that only "big" things are counted as important (since there really are no "big" things in comparison with totality). It is silly to say that "small" things don't really matter, because they clearly impact all kinds of systems, even if they do not impact the totality of reality forever. And it is incoherent to say that the part of the universe that values things (i.e. persons) does not count as the universe valuing things.
So far, it seems that persons and oysters are pretty important to the universe. They are valued. They have meaning and significance. But I think it may be possible to push the envelope even further to envelop most things, and perhaps even all things, in meaning.
Let's say for argument's sake there might be other forms of personhood, or at least life that has personal characteristics, that are part of our universe. While no one has a complete definition of what personhood entails, we can see some broad outlines. Persons are alive. Persons can experience and react to stimuli, usually avoiding harm and pain, and seeking health and equilibrium. Persons show intent and goal directed behavior. As part of this, persons evaluate things are desirable or non-desirable, and this evaluation leads to emotional response and (at least in ourselves) a sense of overall importance or meaningfulness. Persons, at least in ourselves as humans, can think about what we think about, and are aware of our own inner life and our larger world. We experience ourselves as "me" and "I", in distinction to a larger world which is not “me”. And persons can communicate with other persons who have similar characteristics: Whether in the grammatical, layered symbolic systems of human language, or in the simpler growls and chirps and clicks of other species.
Now, it is clear that oysters possess some of these characteristics. Maybe they are not "persons" in the fullest sense, but they possess personal characteristics. They seek food, seek to mate, seek to reproduce, and seek to attain health and avoid harm. And what if, in the future, we are able to find in oysters a sense of valuing or mattering, and detect that there are bonds between oysters-- however rudimentary-- that lead them to "feel" that other oysters are important. Wouldn't this also classify as the universe thinking they are important, since they are included as part of the universe? Then they wouldn't be important because they are "big" or "small" or even because they are valued by persons outside of themselves. They would be valuable in themselves, from themselves, as part of the universe itself.
And if it is possible that there is "personal" value in ways that are less than what we experience as human persons, is it also possible that there are ways of being persons which exceed what we are currently aware of? Take me, for instance. I am fully convinced I am a person (Cogito ergo sum and all that jazz). But I am also aware that I am not a fully aware or even particularly capable person. As an example, I cannot feel the exact location of every hair on my body, nor can I hold my attention on one thought or one phenomena as long as I would like. I know athletes who have a much greater sense of spatial awareness than I do. I know mathematicians who are aware of the properties of numbers and patterns of number processing to a much higher degree than I am capable. I know artists and authors who have a sense of the shape and texture of aesthetic design and linguistic power in a way that eludes me. In short, although I know I am a person, I am also aware there is a lot more to personhood than what I possess.
Is it then possible that there are dimensions of personhood and awareness and valuing and meaning making that exceed what we are currently aware of? And could it be that the universe itself has some type of experience of awareness and value which we are currently unaware of? I do not think this is a certainty, but neither is it far fetched. After all, every few months we find out more about personal aspects of animals and even plants we were not aware of previously. And if the quantum world has taught us anything, it has taught us that consciousness and measurement has to be factored into any system we are observing and testing, because the simple act of personal observation affects the systems we observe. Consciousness is "baked in" to the scientific project, so to speak.
And from the mystical and religious side of the human experience, many would say that consciousness is "baked in" because all realities arise from a Transcendent Self who is within all other selves, as the ultimate knower and experiencer and valuator of all events. This hypothesis, however, is beyond the lived experience and intuition of many people. And besides, if there was some kind of "Self of all selves" at the heart of the Universe, how would we know it? We cannot agree on what makes humans persons, much less other kinds of personhood. At this point in our evolution the only way we could know a “Transcendent Person” is if They revealed themselves to us. And that revelation would, by definition, come through a particular cultural and linguistic framework, and would happen to human persons who are not fully capable of understanding it. This would necessarily lead to overly particular and exclusionary misinterpretations and misunderstandings of the revelation, which in turn would lead to skepticism, cynicism, and well-reasoned denial of the content of those revelations.
Due to this, for the purposes of this analysis, it is probably best to exclude consideration of a Transcendent Self, as well as all other forms of "super-personal" personhood, whether that comes from cosmic processes or transdimensional beings. We don't really need a Transcendent Self to know that oysters and persons are important. It is also probably best to exclude consideration of personal traits in oysters and other non-human creatures. We don't really need self-aware oysters to say they really do matter to the universe. Instead, relying only on our experience of human personhood, we can say that oysters and persons are important to the universe, because they are important to persons who are an important part of the universe.
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