Perhaps spending years on my knees weakened my ability to choose and complete my own goals.
When you choose your own goals, by what criteria should you decide they’re worthy? Some criteria meant to satisfy some higher goal, right? If you had a highest goal (and I’m not sure humans are even really capable of it, but assuming we are), how could you have chosen it? By what criteria could you decide that it was a good or bad goal, given that evaluation of the worth of anything at all is only meaningful in respect to some goal or other?
Saying “this is an action I want to take” is equivalent to “I believe that taking this action will move me closer to a goal I hold”. But choosing a goal is an action in this sense, so there’s eventually a recursion problem with choosing your own goals, unless there’s some highest goal you hold which isn’t chosen by you.
So, if you have a highest goal, it isn’t one you’ve chosen. If you don’t have a highest goal, then except in the case where your highest level goals are all compatible (which seems to collapse to the first case, since you could simply view them all as a single amalgamated goal), your goals are inconsistent. Both the case in which you don’t get to choose your own goal and the case in which your goals are mutually incompatible are pretty unpalatable, but I don’t see a way of avoiding one of them being true.
Saying “this is an action I want to take” is equivalent to “I believe that taking this action will move me closer to a goal I hold”.
Yes, but not necessarily a goal which we’ve consciously chosen. To take a ready example, I participate in meaningless rituals because it amuses me to do so. I haven’t set out to go through life being constantly amused; I’m just wired to accept opportunities for amusement. Perhaps even more illustrative would be a self-destructive habit; I could hypothetically want to do a thing because it would harm me, not because my goal is to be harmed, but for subconscious reasons I don’t fully understand.
Both the case in which you don’t get to choose your own goal and the case in which your goals are mutually incompatible are pretty unpalatable, but I don’t see a way of avoiding one of them being true.
That’s the silver lining of the above—when you don’t understand all of your own motives (and I’d wager most of us don’t), it’s hard to be distressed by their incompatibility.
I was going to say “Besides, you could always just pick a highest goal arbitrarily/irrationally,” but a) somehow I don’t think you’d find that any more palatable, and b) we can’t really choose arbitrarily. Our ideas of what might make a good goal, even when choosing for ourselves, are influenced by the values we take from our culture, which ties back to the first horn of your dilemma. Or would you find that degree of agency sufficient?
(I arrived at that point by asking myself, “Well, how did you choose your goals,” and replying, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time …”)
I don’t really disagree with what you actually say, here, but it seems rather inconsistent with the comment you link to, especially:
I don’t feel like I’m missing a purpose; on the contrary, it gives me the freedom to choose one, with no one to answer to about my choice.
I don’t think you have the freedom to choose one, if we’re using “purpose” to mean an overarching goal in life—that was essentially the point of my comment to which you replied here. My reason for posting in the first place in this thread was just to point out that either you have a purpose (a supergoal), or you have an inconsistent collection of goals, and neither of those possibilities admits of choosing your own purpose.
There seems to be this trap that the areligious are prone to falling into, of thinking that if there are no gods, we are free to rationally choose our own purpose, and it’s this idea that I’m arguing against.
I think you’re right that that’s inconsistent; I wrote the bit you quoted before reading (or thinking about) your point here. (The bit I linked to it for was in the second paragraph; I didn’t think about the conflict with the first.)
But choosing a goal is an action in this sense, so there’s eventually a recursion problem with choosing your own goals, unless there’s some highest goal you hold which isn’t chosen by you.
I can’t fault your reasoning. So I’ll limit it, instead.
In a broader sense of “choice” it is still possible to choose a highest level goal. To wit, you can try pursuing it, and find that you continue to do so, perhaps even more strongly than initially. Alternatively, you can find that you lose all interest. Over the long term as you try different pursuits and settle into a stable set, you can be said to have chosen your goals—just not in the explicit matching-means-to-ends kind of way.
“But this just amounts to choosing satisfying pursuits! So the highest goal is really satisfaction.” OK, if you want to talk that way—but note that “satisfaction” may amount to nothing more than this very fact of goal stability in the face of experimentation and learning. One might as well say that your highest goal is to choose pursuits that are worthy for you. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what I would say.
When you choose your own goals, by what criteria should you decide they’re worthy? Some criteria meant to satisfy some higher goal, right? If you had a highest goal (and I’m not sure humans are even really capable of it, but assuming we are), how could you have chosen it? By what criteria could you decide that it was a good or bad goal, given that evaluation of the worth of anything at all is only meaningful in respect to some goal or other?
Saying “this is an action I want to take” is equivalent to “I believe that taking this action will move me closer to a goal I hold”. But choosing a goal is an action in this sense, so there’s eventually a recursion problem with choosing your own goals, unless there’s some highest goal you hold which isn’t chosen by you.
So, if you have a highest goal, it isn’t one you’ve chosen. If you don’t have a highest goal, then except in the case where your highest level goals are all compatible (which seems to collapse to the first case, since you could simply view them all as a single amalgamated goal), your goals are inconsistent. Both the case in which you don’t get to choose your own goal and the case in which your goals are mutually incompatible are pretty unpalatable, but I don’t see a way of avoiding one of them being true.
Only if you are sane.
Yes, but not necessarily a goal which we’ve consciously chosen. To take a ready example, I participate in meaningless rituals because it amuses me to do so. I haven’t set out to go through life being constantly amused; I’m just wired to accept opportunities for amusement. Perhaps even more illustrative would be a self-destructive habit; I could hypothetically want to do a thing because it would harm me, not because my goal is to be harmed, but for subconscious reasons I don’t fully understand.
That’s the silver lining of the above—when you don’t understand all of your own motives (and I’d wager most of us don’t), it’s hard to be distressed by their incompatibility.
I was going to say “Besides, you could always just pick a highest goal arbitrarily/irrationally,” but a) somehow I don’t think you’d find that any more palatable, and b) we can’t really choose arbitrarily. Our ideas of what might make a good goal, even when choosing for ourselves, are influenced by the values we take from our culture, which ties back to the first horn of your dilemma. Or would you find that degree of agency sufficient?
(I arrived at that point by asking myself, “Well, how did you choose your goals,” and replying, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time …”)
I don’t really disagree with what you actually say, here, but it seems rather inconsistent with the comment you link to, especially:
I don’t think you have the freedom to choose one, if we’re using “purpose” to mean an overarching goal in life—that was essentially the point of my comment to which you replied here. My reason for posting in the first place in this thread was just to point out that either you have a purpose (a supergoal), or you have an inconsistent collection of goals, and neither of those possibilities admits of choosing your own purpose.
There seems to be this trap that the areligious are prone to falling into, of thinking that if there are no gods, we are free to rationally choose our own purpose, and it’s this idea that I’m arguing against.
I think you’re right that that’s inconsistent; I wrote the bit you quoted before reading (or thinking about) your point here. (The bit I linked to it for was in the second paragraph; I didn’t think about the conflict with the first.)
I can’t fault your reasoning. So I’ll limit it, instead.
In a broader sense of “choice” it is still possible to choose a highest level goal. To wit, you can try pursuing it, and find that you continue to do so, perhaps even more strongly than initially. Alternatively, you can find that you lose all interest. Over the long term as you try different pursuits and settle into a stable set, you can be said to have chosen your goals—just not in the explicit matching-means-to-ends kind of way.
“But this just amounts to choosing satisfying pursuits! So the highest goal is really satisfaction.” OK, if you want to talk that way—but note that “satisfaction” may amount to nothing more than this very fact of goal stability in the face of experimentation and learning. One might as well say that your highest goal is to choose pursuits that are worthy for you. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what I would say.