Is Value fundamental to the cosmos? Iain McGilchrist in conversation with Zak Stein

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'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


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  • Laird
I agree with a lot that's expressed in that video. Where I perhaps depart a little from Iain's thinking is in (at least) a couple of ways:

Firstly, in that I consider value to be derivative of or at least dependent on consciousness. By this I don't mean that consciousness is necessary to comprehend values; I mean that in a universe without consciousness, values would be utterly inapplicable, because values and their corresponding morals are only applicable to conscious beings: non-conscious beings are due no moral consideration except insofar as what we do to them affects conscious beings.

Iain, in contrast, seems to see values as ontologically primitive.

This might not a meaningful difference though because one might allow that the values which areontologically primitive assume and depend on consciousness. Whether Iain would be amenable to that framing is another question.

Secondly, in that I take a middle ground between utilitarianism and following values for values' sake: values matter because of the morally-good consequences to which adhering to them tends to lead, so consequences do matter. I agree that strict utilitarianism is very problematic, but I disagree that consequences are immaterial.

Thanks for the share.
(This post was last modified: 2024-11-27, 07:46 PM by Laird. Edited 2 times in total. Edit Reason: Fixed minor typo )
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