Do you live “with purpose”? Hold on. I have another question. Is there purpose in Nature? “Whoa!” you say, “I know where you are taking me from the get go; you are probably going to ask me whether or not the universe shows purpose.”
“Actually, no, at least, not originally. But now that you brought up the potential direction of this little essay, I might consider asking what you put into my mind. I debated the title and the direction here. This could be entitled ‘Cats Run Wild’ after an article published by Phys.org (June 25, 2018) about Australia’s feral cats’ killing spree.* The animals, according to those who studied their diets, kill one million reptiles every day. Yes, I blinked, also, when I saw the number. Australia, the land of lots of strange, dangerous creatures has become the land of wild cats, ravenous wild cats. Can’t imagine that the lizards have long to live at that rate of demise. Strange how we have altered ecologies both on purpose and by accident. So, what do we do now in Australia? Obviously, cats would not be there had we not introduced them into the land of marsupials and lizards.
“ ‘Kill the cats,’ I can hear someone say, whereas someone else says, ‘Good riddance to lizards. Who other than the oddball likes reptiles?’ And that’s the dilemma. Do we prefer the ecology we created by chance or the ecology that we have replaced?”
“Do reptiles serve any purpose?” the person in favor of the cats’ lizard buffet asks.
“They can kill insects,” the person in favor of catricide says, “you just can’t allow an invasive species to decimate an endemic one. You have to purposely cull the cat population.”
Purpose, either implied or stated, is one problem with our approach to the world and our assumed role in its processes. It doesn’t matter whether or not one is atheist or believer, that word, purpose , keeps popping up in conversations. When we want to justify our position on Nature, we refer to some teleological argument. Yes, even those who claim to act in the name of ‘pure science’ usually interject the notion of purpose, usually masking it in the ‘role’ an organism plays in a complex ecology.
“Ecologies are naturally balanced,” you say, “until humans come along and tip the scales.” Someone else says, “This is the way Nature made the Australian ecology, lots of reptiles. It took Nature millions of years to make it this way, to build a food chain with equilibrium.” Yet another person asks, “Isn’t any ecology just a collection of organic and inorganic stuff that accreted by accident? Isn’t equilibrium a temporary state? Doesn’t disequilibrium lie just around the corner with the next ‘natural catastrophe’? If an organism goes missing or the inorganic substance changes, say through erosion, it’s a matter of chance; there’s no purpose in the change. Only people can act purposefully.”
Is the applicability of the word purpose valid only in regard to conscious beings? So, does your pet dog do something “on purpose”? Does it have a level of consciousness sufficient to include purposeful action? What about a seal that saves a human from drowning, as in the case of Kevin Hines, who tells the story of his attempted suicide? Hines jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 2000, and, though badly injured, survived the fall. Too hurt to swim, Kevin was about to drown when a sea lion pushed him to the surface “on purpose” and repeatedly until a rescue boat arrived.**
Now that I think about animals seeming to act purposely, I’m beginning to wonder about those cats. Are they serving a purpose we don’t know? Are the reptiles? Did the humans who took cats to Australia have a long-term purpose in mind? “Let’s get rid of the reptiles on this little continent.”
Now, you’ll interject, “The first cat owners introduced the cats into the continent without realizing the consequences of their actions. They probably took the cats with them either because they liked cats or because they knew cats would eliminate mice and rats. Who could have foreseen that cats would escape into the wild and proliferate? Who would have guessed they would develop a taste for reptiles? Those people weren’t really acting to purposefully change the ecology of Australia.”
Let me put it on a personal level: I confess I have feral cats. Well, I really don’t have the cats. I live in a woodsy area next to a 450-acre park with more woods. There are feral cats in the woods. I don’t feed them, don’t pet them, don’t take them to a vet, and generally don’t pay any attention to them unless they walk by chance in my path. They seem to survive winter after winter after winter, their offspring having more offspring. And they kill birds, and mice, rabbits, and moles. I don’t have to worry about mice trying to get into the house when the cats are in the neighborhood. So, I welcome the presence of the feral cats whom I do not have to feed or care for. They’re feral. They serve my purpose by reducing the field mice population.
“They serve my purpose,” I repeat. I don’t have to poison mice or trap them. Isn’t that the way most of us see “Nature”? Take a national park, for example. “Ah! What beauty! I could picnic here at least once a summer,” a visitor says. The natural setting, the ecology in place, certainly serves ITS purpose of preserving the beauty of Nature and places to picnic, not to mention providing the setting for millions of photos that further preserve the purpose for which we designate an area: Scenic beauty and ecological conservation. We set out to preserve—with consciously chosen qualifications—Nature “as it is unspoiled,” we say—occasional discarded aluminum can notwithstanding.
Does a national park serve ITS purpose? Or does it serve a temporary purpose of mine or yours? Is it a “wild area” if we control it with park rangers and restrictions? Is it an unfettered natural ecology if we “reintroduce wolves,” for example? Is it wild when we add signs that say “Stay on the paved roads, paths, and walkways.” “Don’t feed the bears.” “Don’t harass the wildlife.” “Don’t litter.” “Don’t abandon your unwanted cat; they’ll eat the lizards.”
Pay attention to the word purpose as it occurs in discussions you have or witness over the next week or so. How many arguments stem from an assumption of purpose either in Nature or in ostensibly random events? Is there a purpose in the actions of feral cats and their ravenous devouring of Australia’s reptiles? Is it to eliminate reptiles? And if the cats succeed, will that mean their purpose is to eliminate themselves by eliminating their food? What will they eat when they empty the lizard buffet?
Is there a purpose in any genocide? In any attempted conquest of the world? Yet, generation after generation imposes someone or some few who invade and devour. Had Hitler been successful, over what decimated world would he have ruled? Some 50 million people died during WWII. Or what about a local human ecology. In every neighborhood gang war, what purpose will be fulfilled? Look at the short-lived rise of the Islamic Caliphate called ISIS or ISIL or Daesh. They were the analog of Australia’s feral cats. They overran a region for a short period, and then, their “food” consumed and the ecology disrupted, they became the hunted and the decimated, now represented by small leftover groups hiding in the rocks.
Note that there is no way to demonstrate a relationship between what is purposeful in your eyes and what happens in the universe, in Nature, or in human affairs when one looks at the “big picture.” What purpose did the slaughter of WWII or the Caliphate serve?
“Are you saying with Sartre and maybe some nihilists that we live in a meaningless and purposeless world?” you ask.
“Not necessarily,” I respond. “Rather, I’m suggesting that when we speak of purposes, we speak from faith of some kind. We want the world to be explicable, and identifying a purpose helps us to explain what is ultimately inexplicable. That even if the world is inexplicable, it might be purposely so. Most of us just don’t like the idea of an arbitrary world of meaningless events, but in reality, there’s no way to demonstrate, for example, that the Australian cats and lizards serve a purpose. We impose purposes on both natural interrelationships and on human relationships. We have some justification in assigning purpose to human behaviors, I suppose, since we believe we have that sophisticated level of consciousness we term ‘free will.’ But we rely on belief in assigning purpose to lizards eating bugs and cats eating lizards.
“I have no way of knowing whether or not the seal that saved Kevin acted purposely. Maybe the sea lion was playing, and Kevin was its ‘beach ball.’ I’ve seen individual humans act ‘on purpose’ without knowledge of larger consequences in mind. I don’t think Hitler thought Germany’s nearly complete destruction was a possible outcome. I don’t think he operated with either purpose or purposelessness that could be knowable only after the fact of the war. I don’t think those who introduced cats into Australia just as those who introduced rabbits into the same land, those who introduced pythons into the Everglades, or kudzu into the South, acted with purposeful foresight. I think much of what we call purpose is a recognition of history, a history that includes, for example, the deaths of Australian lizards and the eventual decimation of feral cats. If we can’t ascribe ‘purpose’ to many human acts and interactions with other humans and with Nature except through history, then is history also the mechanism for finding a purpose to the universe?
“You’ll no doubt want to say that there is purpose in the cats’ eating lizards. Cats have a self-preservation instinct, so they fulfill the purpose of staying alive by eating whatever is available. That places purpose solely in the realm of the individual cat. So, also, lizards eat insects. Insects are there on purpose to serve as food for lizards. Individual lizards eat to survive. There is no larger purpose in the Australian ecology.
“Anyway, I started this thing because I saw that story on the cats, and then you had to come along and throw in the stuff about a ‘purpose’ in the universe that led me to a discussion about a devastating war that included an attempt at genocide. Sorry if I didn’t address the issue you thought I should address. But, again, if nothing else comes out of this, maybe both of us should pay attention to the assumptions about purpose in our conversations.”
*Australian feral cats kill a million reptiles a day: study. June 25, 2018. Phys.org online at https://phys.org/news/2018-06-australian-feral-cats-million-reptiles.html
** https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11448514/San-Francisco-bridge-jumper-says-sea-lion-saved-him.html
“Actually, no, at least, not originally. But now that you brought up the potential direction of this little essay, I might consider asking what you put into my mind. I debated the title and the direction here. This could be entitled ‘Cats Run Wild’ after an article published by Phys.org (June 25, 2018) about Australia’s feral cats’ killing spree.* The animals, according to those who studied their diets, kill one million reptiles every day. Yes, I blinked, also, when I saw the number. Australia, the land of lots of strange, dangerous creatures has become the land of wild cats, ravenous wild cats. Can’t imagine that the lizards have long to live at that rate of demise. Strange how we have altered ecologies both on purpose and by accident. So, what do we do now in Australia? Obviously, cats would not be there had we not introduced them into the land of marsupials and lizards.
“ ‘Kill the cats,’ I can hear someone say, whereas someone else says, ‘Good riddance to lizards. Who other than the oddball likes reptiles?’ And that’s the dilemma. Do we prefer the ecology we created by chance or the ecology that we have replaced?”
“Do reptiles serve any purpose?” the person in favor of the cats’ lizard buffet asks.
“They can kill insects,” the person in favor of catricide says, “you just can’t allow an invasive species to decimate an endemic one. You have to purposely cull the cat population.”
Purpose, either implied or stated, is one problem with our approach to the world and our assumed role in its processes. It doesn’t matter whether or not one is atheist or believer, that word, purpose , keeps popping up in conversations. When we want to justify our position on Nature, we refer to some teleological argument. Yes, even those who claim to act in the name of ‘pure science’ usually interject the notion of purpose, usually masking it in the ‘role’ an organism plays in a complex ecology.
“Ecologies are naturally balanced,” you say, “until humans come along and tip the scales.” Someone else says, “This is the way Nature made the Australian ecology, lots of reptiles. It took Nature millions of years to make it this way, to build a food chain with equilibrium.” Yet another person asks, “Isn’t any ecology just a collection of organic and inorganic stuff that accreted by accident? Isn’t equilibrium a temporary state? Doesn’t disequilibrium lie just around the corner with the next ‘natural catastrophe’? If an organism goes missing or the inorganic substance changes, say through erosion, it’s a matter of chance; there’s no purpose in the change. Only people can act purposefully.”
Is the applicability of the word purpose valid only in regard to conscious beings? So, does your pet dog do something “on purpose”? Does it have a level of consciousness sufficient to include purposeful action? What about a seal that saves a human from drowning, as in the case of Kevin Hines, who tells the story of his attempted suicide? Hines jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 2000, and, though badly injured, survived the fall. Too hurt to swim, Kevin was about to drown when a sea lion pushed him to the surface “on purpose” and repeatedly until a rescue boat arrived.**
Now that I think about animals seeming to act purposely, I’m beginning to wonder about those cats. Are they serving a purpose we don’t know? Are the reptiles? Did the humans who took cats to Australia have a long-term purpose in mind? “Let’s get rid of the reptiles on this little continent.”
Now, you’ll interject, “The first cat owners introduced the cats into the continent without realizing the consequences of their actions. They probably took the cats with them either because they liked cats or because they knew cats would eliminate mice and rats. Who could have foreseen that cats would escape into the wild and proliferate? Who would have guessed they would develop a taste for reptiles? Those people weren’t really acting to purposefully change the ecology of Australia.”
Let me put it on a personal level: I confess I have feral cats. Well, I really don’t have the cats. I live in a woodsy area next to a 450-acre park with more woods. There are feral cats in the woods. I don’t feed them, don’t pet them, don’t take them to a vet, and generally don’t pay any attention to them unless they walk by chance in my path. They seem to survive winter after winter after winter, their offspring having more offspring. And they kill birds, and mice, rabbits, and moles. I don’t have to worry about mice trying to get into the house when the cats are in the neighborhood. So, I welcome the presence of the feral cats whom I do not have to feed or care for. They’re feral. They serve my purpose by reducing the field mice population.
“They serve my purpose,” I repeat. I don’t have to poison mice or trap them. Isn’t that the way most of us see “Nature”? Take a national park, for example. “Ah! What beauty! I could picnic here at least once a summer,” a visitor says. The natural setting, the ecology in place, certainly serves ITS purpose of preserving the beauty of Nature and places to picnic, not to mention providing the setting for millions of photos that further preserve the purpose for which we designate an area: Scenic beauty and ecological conservation. We set out to preserve—with consciously chosen qualifications—Nature “as it is unspoiled,” we say—occasional discarded aluminum can notwithstanding.
Does a national park serve ITS purpose? Or does it serve a temporary purpose of mine or yours? Is it a “wild area” if we control it with park rangers and restrictions? Is it an unfettered natural ecology if we “reintroduce wolves,” for example? Is it wild when we add signs that say “Stay on the paved roads, paths, and walkways.” “Don’t feed the bears.” “Don’t harass the wildlife.” “Don’t litter.” “Don’t abandon your unwanted cat; they’ll eat the lizards.”
Pay attention to the word purpose as it occurs in discussions you have or witness over the next week or so. How many arguments stem from an assumption of purpose either in Nature or in ostensibly random events? Is there a purpose in the actions of feral cats and their ravenous devouring of Australia’s reptiles? Is it to eliminate reptiles? And if the cats succeed, will that mean their purpose is to eliminate themselves by eliminating their food? What will they eat when they empty the lizard buffet?
Is there a purpose in any genocide? In any attempted conquest of the world? Yet, generation after generation imposes someone or some few who invade and devour. Had Hitler been successful, over what decimated world would he have ruled? Some 50 million people died during WWII. Or what about a local human ecology. In every neighborhood gang war, what purpose will be fulfilled? Look at the short-lived rise of the Islamic Caliphate called ISIS or ISIL or Daesh. They were the analog of Australia’s feral cats. They overran a region for a short period, and then, their “food” consumed and the ecology disrupted, they became the hunted and the decimated, now represented by small leftover groups hiding in the rocks.
Note that there is no way to demonstrate a relationship between what is purposeful in your eyes and what happens in the universe, in Nature, or in human affairs when one looks at the “big picture.” What purpose did the slaughter of WWII or the Caliphate serve?
“Are you saying with Sartre and maybe some nihilists that we live in a meaningless and purposeless world?” you ask.
“Not necessarily,” I respond. “Rather, I’m suggesting that when we speak of purposes, we speak from faith of some kind. We want the world to be explicable, and identifying a purpose helps us to explain what is ultimately inexplicable. That even if the world is inexplicable, it might be purposely so. Most of us just don’t like the idea of an arbitrary world of meaningless events, but in reality, there’s no way to demonstrate, for example, that the Australian cats and lizards serve a purpose. We impose purposes on both natural interrelationships and on human relationships. We have some justification in assigning purpose to human behaviors, I suppose, since we believe we have that sophisticated level of consciousness we term ‘free will.’ But we rely on belief in assigning purpose to lizards eating bugs and cats eating lizards.
“I have no way of knowing whether or not the seal that saved Kevin acted purposely. Maybe the sea lion was playing, and Kevin was its ‘beach ball.’ I’ve seen individual humans act ‘on purpose’ without knowledge of larger consequences in mind. I don’t think Hitler thought Germany’s nearly complete destruction was a possible outcome. I don’t think he operated with either purpose or purposelessness that could be knowable only after the fact of the war. I don’t think those who introduced cats into Australia just as those who introduced rabbits into the same land, those who introduced pythons into the Everglades, or kudzu into the South, acted with purposeful foresight. I think much of what we call purpose is a recognition of history, a history that includes, for example, the deaths of Australian lizards and the eventual decimation of feral cats. If we can’t ascribe ‘purpose’ to many human acts and interactions with other humans and with Nature except through history, then is history also the mechanism for finding a purpose to the universe?
“You’ll no doubt want to say that there is purpose in the cats’ eating lizards. Cats have a self-preservation instinct, so they fulfill the purpose of staying alive by eating whatever is available. That places purpose solely in the realm of the individual cat. So, also, lizards eat insects. Insects are there on purpose to serve as food for lizards. Individual lizards eat to survive. There is no larger purpose in the Australian ecology.
“Anyway, I started this thing because I saw that story on the cats, and then you had to come along and throw in the stuff about a ‘purpose’ in the universe that led me to a discussion about a devastating war that included an attempt at genocide. Sorry if I didn’t address the issue you thought I should address. But, again, if nothing else comes out of this, maybe both of us should pay attention to the assumptions about purpose in our conversations.”
*Australian feral cats kill a million reptiles a day: study. June 25, 2018. Phys.org online at https://phys.org/news/2018-06-australian-feral-cats-million-reptiles.html
** https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11448514/San-Francisco-bridge-jumper-says-sea-lion-saved-him.html
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