DE Weekly: Mind, Matter, & Eliminativism
Below is an archived email originally sent on February 24, 2025.
Mind, Matter, & Eliminativism
One of the great contentions posited in existentialism is that, in a world devoid of inherent meaning, we are responsible for making meaning in our own lives. Through acceptance of the absurdity of life and radical ownership of our own choices, this is possible.
Another contention of existentialism––and this one is more important, in my opinion––is that this reality is not a bad thing. This is of ultimate importance to recognize, because it’s what distinguishes the philosophy from nihilism.
Where nihilism would look at a life devoid of inherent meaning and say, “There is no hope”, existentialism would look at this life and say, “There is hope in every choice I make and every path I take.”
I have what I would call an intolerance for nihilism––I do not humor it. At all costs, I try and avoid cynicism, pessimism, and reductionist attempts at snatching meaning from my fellow man.
This is why, when I came across a quote this past week, I had a visceral reaction to it. The quote was from the late cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett. It said, “Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.”
This kind of worldview has not been limited to the individual, cellular level. It’s been applied to our whole universe, too. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has also said in the past that “The universe is blind to our sorrows and indifferent to our pains.”
These two quotes are go-tos for believers in Eliminativism: the view that all mental states and properties thereof, that all our beliefs, desires––indeed, our very consciousness––does not exist.
Eliminativism is nihilism wearing a lab coat.
Am I to believe the claim that not a single cell in this universe cares about me, that not one cell in my own body has a stake in my own survival?
Whenever I see quotes like Dennett’s, I’m reminded of the fact that people who receive organ transplants usually need to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives after the transplant to prevent their body from attacking the transplanted organ.
There have been other cases where recipients of transplanted organs actually adopt some of the behaviors and preferences of the donor.
Sounds to me like the cells in your body might care, if even just a little bit.
As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
Even Jean-Paul Sartre, who I’d reckon is one of the more pessimistic existentialists, would find little to agree with as it pertains to the eliminativists.
Sartre wrote of two classes of being-in-the-world: being-in-itself and being-for-itself.
Humans are being-for-itself. What this means is that humans are subjects in the world, not objects––we are conscious of our own existence and, therefore, both actively and passively acting on its behalf.
We have a stake in our own existence, as does everything that constitutes us. This, of course, was not even a new interpretation of things for Sartre’s part.
This has been evident since Aristotle’s Metaphysics, when he discussed being qua being––or the most fundamental aspects of being.
We have an immutable nature that constitutes what it means to be human.
I recently started a new book by Brian Greene, a theoretical physicist and professor at Columbia University, called Until the End of Time.
In the first few chapters, Greene explains the roots of the evolution of life, and lays out what I think is a much better theory of consciousness than I’ve heard in a long time:
“Billions of years later, as this long process continued to unfold, a particular suite of mutations provided forms of life with an enhanced capacity for cognition. Some life not only became aware, but became aware of being aware. That is, some life acquired conscious self-awareness. Such self-reflective beings have naturally wondered what consciousness is and how it arose: How can a swirl of mindless matter think and feel?”
Wise question. He followed with a wiser answer: “. . . we are up against a far greater challenge . . . consciousness if the most difficult conundrum we have ever encountered . . .”
This is, in my opinion, a much better view of things than those proposed by Dennett and Tyson.
Greene has the courage to approach a difficult problem and say, “I’m not sure what the answer is.” I respect that to an immense degree. Greene is also an excellent student of philosophy, so such an answer is well-studied.
The cells in my body are telling me something as it relates to all this…so here’s what they (read: I) think…
We were born to be us.
There is no other way to be us.
Carl Sagan once remarked that the odds of us being born as us were as much as 1 in 400 trillion.
Our existence is not an accident. It is many things––absurd, for one––but an accident it is not.
The progenitors of our existence wanted us to live. To survive.
You––you, yourself––could not have existed under any other circumstances than the ones under which you were born and in which you now and currently exist.
I leave you with an internet adage I’ve grown fond of: “The universe cares. That’s why we’re here.”
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
The full title of the book I mentioned is Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in An Evolving Universe by Brian Greene. I don’t normally recommend books before I’ve finished them, but after three chapters of this one, I can tell it’s one I’ll recommend forever. Go get it if it sounds interesting to you.
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