Hi GDR -- looks to me like things are on track here topicwise (but there's a chance that I'm not judging this the way Straggler would...)
GDR writes:
I don't agree that the scientific method will ever answer the underlying "why" we can be altruistic, or perceive something as beautiful etc. Science can only answer how it happened or how it might have happened...
I agree that at one level it would say why altruism happens but there is a deeper level of why involved. For example why is gene propagation a good thing? Why does it matter at all? Why does it matter that we continue to exist? Even though we might be able to discern it happening we can't know why it is true...
It strikes me that your "deeper level of why" is the very thing that Straggler was asking about in the OP of this thread. Like him, I'm inclined to wonder what it means, exactly.
Actually, I'm more inclined to view it as a kind of unwitting sophistry, based on an unfounded assumption that life and the universe exist to serve some purpose or goal that somehow stands beyond or outside of life and the universe. This sort of assumption is nothing more or less than a natural extension of the normal human cognitive habit of perceiving or attributing purposes and reasons for the things we observe, which in turn extends our normal social habit of asserting that we (people) have purposes and reasons for doing the things we (people) do.
You want to ask why gene propagation is a good thing. I'd counter by asking: what would lead anyone to say it's a good thing? Obviously, it's good from the perspective of a sentient species whose existence is impossible in the absence of gene propagation -- that is, to the extent the given species considers its own existence to be "good", then the factors that make it possible are, in that perspective, also "good".
And here's the kicker: so far as we know, there is no basis for such a perspective other than the existence of sentient life. In the absence of a life form with sufficient awareness to form value judgments and label things as "good", there can't be any way to even pose a question about it.
As I understand it, theists want to assert that the transience and tenuousness and implausibility of life (both life in general and our individual personal lives) are somehow too frightening to be taken at face value, and that some unobservable external entity must be responsible for it all because otherwise it "makes no sense".
This, it seems to me, is the foundation for your "deeper level of why": mere existence simply does not explain itself, and you sense a need for something else that somehow stands beyond existence in order to explain it. Atheists don't share this sensation, and so you might be inclined to say that their world view is "limited", because they lack this notion of having or wanting an "external explanation" for existence.
But I would turn it around: having no evidential basis for assuming the presence of an unobservable external purpose, atheists instead look at what is actually going on with observable existence. We notice and carefully examine the transience and tenuousness and implausibility of life; we look for the things that impede it and promote it, we weigh the relative impact and outcomes of one set of behaviors vs. another, and can try to judge, albeit imperfectly, which ones will be the most beneficial in the broadest possible sense.
We recognize that sentient creatures have to make such judgments, have to form hypotheses that make testable predictions, have to improve the accuracy and reliability of predictions, have to develop a suitably expanded notion of what constitutes "good" outcomes so that our sense of "goodness" is truly sustainable. As sentient components in a complex network of living things, we have a responsibility to ourselves and to life in general to maintain a sustainable sense of goodness and actively implement it. (This is what my user name and signature is all about.) We must pursue this -- our own intrinsic purpose that exists solely because we exist -- without imposing artificial limits on ourselves.
(Important caveat: respect for other living beings is not an artificial limit -- it's a logical necessity. And the broader the range of "others" we are able to respect, the better. Absolute pacifism may never be possible, "extreme Jainism" may never become our common lifestyle, but wanton violence and abuse are never sustainable.)
Frankly, religious belief -- the notion that there is an externally defined purpose to which we must submit on faith alone -- is an artificially imposed limit (one which all too often violates the principle of respect for others). In effect, it is the theistic view that is "philosophically limited", i.e. limited by the very nature of its "philosophical" foundations.
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
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