One would think no question is a dumb one. After all, the mere asking implies a search for knowledge, possibly a search for “the truth.” But I just saw an article by Todd May, a professor of philosophy at Clemson University, that makes me wonder whether or not there could be “a dumb question.” The title of May’s article is “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?”*
May goes through the standard arguments: We are altering Earth at the expense of other denizens. We go; they survive. We stay; they approach extinction or become extinct. As a philosopher, May acknowledges that without humanity Earth would have no sweeping consciousness to mimic human awareness. The extinction of any living creature is tragic only when we label it so. Lions do not sit and weep after eating a wildebeest. Whereas it is true that animals, such as dogs and elephants, appear to mourn their fallen, it is not true that they could either anticipate nor philosophize about any wholesale extinction as humans can. Tragedy belongs to humans; we introduced it to the world, and we alone can “appreciate” it. And philosophy is our bailiwick.
Citing human “predatory behavior” as an argument by those advocating human extinction for the “good” of the planet, May then says a “tragedy” would lie in the loss of what we have engendered: “art of various kinds” and “sciences that seek to understand the universe and our place in it.”** Otherwise, he argues, the mere extinction of creatures—namely, us—capable of wanton destruction “would be a good thing.”
We dramatize tragedy and its antithesis, comedy. And we even have a set of “rules” regarding our dramatizations. Oedipus encapsulates the chief one in initiating his own tragic life by killing his father. Thus, in our sense of “tragedy” we ascribe responsibility to the tragic character, though in everyday life, we loosely speak of a tragic car accident or building collapse (Of course, we could attribute some responsibility to the humans involved, say, asking why they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or in a building with design flaws). There’s another consideration: We can speak of “unfolding tragedy,” such as a widening path of destruction and death during a devastating hurricane, a terrible fire, or fatal epidemic; but we only see and understand the full extent of any “tragedy” in retrospect, a fait accompli. An “unfolding tragedy” is such by virtue of a series of events that sum to a final outcome. If humans were not around, then who senses the tragedy, who sees the final outcome marked by their extinction?
A world without humans would be somewhat safer for some lifeforms, but it would not eliminate extinctions. Earth has seen the rise and fall of many species (an estimated billions of them), most that died out long before the first primates began wreaking havoc.*** Extinction of species, probably including our own eventual extinction, is as “natural” as water’s flow downhill.****
Only humans can ask whether or not their own extinction would be “tragic.” Only humans understand tragedy, so in absence of people, there is no tragedy. There are only physical and biological processes. The question that May asks is a parlor game akin to “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” That’s why I consider the question “Would human extinction be a tragedy” the dumbest question.
Not done yet. I have to ask if there is any further use of “philosophical” inquiry. May says, “It may well be…that the extinction of humanity would make the world better off and yet would be a tragedy. I don’t want to say this for sure, since the issue is quite complex.” So, are we given to philosophia gratia philosophiae as we are often given to ars gratia artis (l’art pour l’art)? Is May practicing musings for the sake of musings? Has philosophy nothing left to teach us?
Recognize that the earliest philosophers centered their thinking on the nature of the world, eventually arriving at four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Then Leucippus and Democritus talked of atoms before “philosophy” turned toward the nature of life itself and human thought and behavior. And where are we now after 2,500 years of philosophizing? Asking questions about whether or not our extinction would be tragic? Philosophy is dead. It has never given us unequivocal answers to the so-called “important questions,” while it has twisted and turned through convolutions in “clever” arguments.
Apparently, the answers we seek about the makeup of the world, human nature, and behavior lie not in philosophy, but rather in physics, biology, including neuroscience, and psychology. True, even these endeavors fall short of completion, but they all have methodologies that produce testable results. Philosophy produces musings that might amuse even when the topic is tragedy, but that makes it little different from art, literature, and music. Maybe May should ask another question: Would the extinction of philosophy be tragic?
*May, Todd. “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy.” The New York Times. Opinion. December 17, 2018. Online at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/opinion/human-extinction-climate-change.html
Accessed on December 18, 2018.
**Sic. Obviously, not “sciences,” but rather “scientists.”
***Raup, David. Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? New York. W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.
“There are millions of different species of animals and plants on earth—possibly as many as forty million. But somewhere between five and fifty billion species have existed at one time or another. Thus, only about one in a thousand species is still alive…” (3).
****Aren’t we the recipients of our life on Earth because the dinosaurs and other predecessor animals became extinct?
May goes through the standard arguments: We are altering Earth at the expense of other denizens. We go; they survive. We stay; they approach extinction or become extinct. As a philosopher, May acknowledges that without humanity Earth would have no sweeping consciousness to mimic human awareness. The extinction of any living creature is tragic only when we label it so. Lions do not sit and weep after eating a wildebeest. Whereas it is true that animals, such as dogs and elephants, appear to mourn their fallen, it is not true that they could either anticipate nor philosophize about any wholesale extinction as humans can. Tragedy belongs to humans; we introduced it to the world, and we alone can “appreciate” it. And philosophy is our bailiwick.
Citing human “predatory behavior” as an argument by those advocating human extinction for the “good” of the planet, May then says a “tragedy” would lie in the loss of what we have engendered: “art of various kinds” and “sciences that seek to understand the universe and our place in it.”** Otherwise, he argues, the mere extinction of creatures—namely, us—capable of wanton destruction “would be a good thing.”
We dramatize tragedy and its antithesis, comedy. And we even have a set of “rules” regarding our dramatizations. Oedipus encapsulates the chief one in initiating his own tragic life by killing his father. Thus, in our sense of “tragedy” we ascribe responsibility to the tragic character, though in everyday life, we loosely speak of a tragic car accident or building collapse (Of course, we could attribute some responsibility to the humans involved, say, asking why they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or in a building with design flaws). There’s another consideration: We can speak of “unfolding tragedy,” such as a widening path of destruction and death during a devastating hurricane, a terrible fire, or fatal epidemic; but we only see and understand the full extent of any “tragedy” in retrospect, a fait accompli. An “unfolding tragedy” is such by virtue of a series of events that sum to a final outcome. If humans were not around, then who senses the tragedy, who sees the final outcome marked by their extinction?
A world without humans would be somewhat safer for some lifeforms, but it would not eliminate extinctions. Earth has seen the rise and fall of many species (an estimated billions of them), most that died out long before the first primates began wreaking havoc.*** Extinction of species, probably including our own eventual extinction, is as “natural” as water’s flow downhill.****
Only humans can ask whether or not their own extinction would be “tragic.” Only humans understand tragedy, so in absence of people, there is no tragedy. There are only physical and biological processes. The question that May asks is a parlor game akin to “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” That’s why I consider the question “Would human extinction be a tragedy” the dumbest question.
Not done yet. I have to ask if there is any further use of “philosophical” inquiry. May says, “It may well be…that the extinction of humanity would make the world better off and yet would be a tragedy. I don’t want to say this for sure, since the issue is quite complex.” So, are we given to philosophia gratia philosophiae as we are often given to ars gratia artis (l’art pour l’art)? Is May practicing musings for the sake of musings? Has philosophy nothing left to teach us?
Recognize that the earliest philosophers centered their thinking on the nature of the world, eventually arriving at four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Then Leucippus and Democritus talked of atoms before “philosophy” turned toward the nature of life itself and human thought and behavior. And where are we now after 2,500 years of philosophizing? Asking questions about whether or not our extinction would be tragic? Philosophy is dead. It has never given us unequivocal answers to the so-called “important questions,” while it has twisted and turned through convolutions in “clever” arguments.
Apparently, the answers we seek about the makeup of the world, human nature, and behavior lie not in philosophy, but rather in physics, biology, including neuroscience, and psychology. True, even these endeavors fall short of completion, but they all have methodologies that produce testable results. Philosophy produces musings that might amuse even when the topic is tragedy, but that makes it little different from art, literature, and music. Maybe May should ask another question: Would the extinction of philosophy be tragic?
*May, Todd. “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy.” The New York Times. Opinion. December 17, 2018. Online at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/opinion/human-extinction-climate-change.html
Accessed on December 18, 2018.
**Sic. Obviously, not “sciences,” but rather “scientists.”
***Raup, David. Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? New York. W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.
“There are millions of different species of animals and plants on earth—possibly as many as forty million. But somewhere between five and fifty billion species have existed at one time or another. Thus, only about one in a thousand species is still alive…” (3).
****Aren’t we the recipients of our life on Earth because the dinosaurs and other predecessor animals became extinct?
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