If anything means something to you, then the universe has meaning for you. If you have a purpose for any things, then those things have a purpose for you. The universe is full of meanings and purposes that people have.
I think it is a common error, that I’ve shared myself, in denying meaning to things (meaning, purpose, morality) because the world is full of crazy people associating crazy meanings with those terms. But why let the crazy people own all the words, when there are perfectly sane and useful senses of those words?
In my case, I used to call myself amoral because I rejected the various notions of objective morality as the stuff of lunatics. But on later consideration, I found I had a number of preferences about the behavior of others that sure looked much like the morality of others, I just didn’t assert my moral preferences as imperatives from God/The Universe/Reason/Truth, but as imperatives from me. Wouldn’t it be handy to have a word for moral preferences without crazy and confused conceptual baggage? I think so, so I now assert a non crazy morality conception of morality as morality.
I think for similar reasons, I think of morality as descriptive rather than philosophical. That is, humans have certain moral sentiments, on average, that have evolved in to place because cooperation is so darned important a part of the survival advantage of humans. Attempts to instrospect on the moral feelings and derive “ought” from them are a side effect of the sentiments and rationality that has evolved to serve humans so well. Looking for general moral truths beyond “this is right because it feels right” is at best besides the point and at worst impossible.
If anything means something to you, then the universe has meaning for you. If you have a purpose for any things, then those things have a purpose for you. The universe is full of meanings and purposes that people have.
I think it is a common error, that I’ve shared myself, in denying meaning to things (meaning, purpose, morality) because the world is full of crazy people associating crazy meanings with those terms. But why let the crazy people own all the words, when there are perfectly sane and useful senses of those words?
In my case, I used to call myself amoral because I rejected the various notions of objective morality as the stuff of lunatics. But on later consideration, I found I had a number of preferences about the behavior of others that sure looked much like the morality of others, I just didn’t assert my moral preferences as imperatives from God/The Universe/Reason/Truth, but as imperatives from me. Wouldn’t it be handy to have a word for moral preferences without crazy and confused conceptual baggage? I think so, so I now assert a non crazy morality conception of morality as morality.
I think for similar reasons, I think of morality as descriptive rather than philosophical. That is, humans have certain moral sentiments, on average, that have evolved in to place because cooperation is so darned important a part of the survival advantage of humans. Attempts to instrospect on the moral feelings and derive “ought” from them are a side effect of the sentiments and rationality that has evolved to serve humans so well. Looking for general moral truths beyond “this is right because it feels right” is at best besides the point and at worst impossible.