There is a certain type of value in our existence that transcends ethical value. It is beautifully captured in this quote from Richard Feynman:
It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing—atoms with curiosity—that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders.
Well, these scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.
The Meaning Of It All
Carl Sagan beautifully expressed the same sentiment.
We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
Cosmos
The ideas expressed in these quotes feels a thousand times deeper and more profound than anything offered in ethics. Trolley problems seem trivial by comparison. If somebody argued that the universe would be better off without us on the basis of, say, a utilitarian calculation of net happiness, I would feel like there is an entire dimension of value that they are completely missing out on. This type of value, a type of raw aesthetic sense of the profound strangeness and beauty of reality, is tremendously subtle and easily slips out of grasp, but is crucially important. My blog header serves as a reminder: We are atoms contemplating atoms.
Here’s my favorite from Bertrand Russell:
“Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite questions can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conceptions of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good”