“Airplane” inexplicably did not win the Palme ‘d’Or at Cannes. Looking back, it is hard to believe that it was passed over when you have riveting scenes like this. But this discussion is not really about “Airplane”. Rather, it is about the fact that there are things people say to us to which we rightly respond “Surely you can’t be serious!”
Among the candidates for our incredulity are claims that necessarily true statements are only true by convention if at all. What do I mean? Here’s an example from the woolly world of postmodernist deconstruction. I have met people who believe that the equation “7+5=12” is not objectively true. Rather, they say, it is only true because some language users have agreed that it be true within their language community. In such cases my initial response is to think that something must be amiss. Surely they can’t be serious!
So then, peacemaker that I am, I set about seeking a charitable interpretation. Perhaps their point is that the symbolic representations of 7, 5, 12, +, = are arbitrary conventions and thus the way we communicate the truth that 7+5=12 is arbitrary. We could just as well have said the same thing by writing E { @ } x.
The problem with this interpretation is that it seems to be a trivialization of their point (of course the inscription “7” does not necessarily mean “seven”) and these folk seem much too earnest to be offering me a mere triviality. As a result, more often than not I have been forced to conclude that they are claiming something more radical, namely that the truth value of 7+5=12 is contingently determined by a community of language users.
When I hear that I am astonished. Surely they can’t be serious. “7+5=12” is not a contingent fact like “Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States” let alone a contingent relative fact like “Vanilla tastes better than chocolate.” Rather, it belongs in another category altogether, that of objective and necessarily true facts which retain their truth value whether or not human beings use “7” or “E” to represent the number seven and whether all of us or none of us agree that “7+5=12”.
With that in mind, let’s turn to a recent comment by SilverBullet: “I see no reason to believe in the sort of purpose you purport human beings to have, and I don’t see any reason to think that what we do and how we live simply doesn’t matter unless it matters to a god. Please explain that to me better Randal.” “How is it that what we do simply doesn’t matter at all if there is no god to have given what we do a purpose?”
SB talks about having “interests” and “mattering”. Everything depends on what we mean when we use this language. Irrespective of whether you or I were created for anything, we clearly have interests and some things (but not others) matter to us. So it is trivially true that some things matter to us and others don’t.
The question is not whether we have interests but rather whether our interests can be objectively right or wrong irrespective of the number of people who might share them. And that’s the kicker. If we were not created with any objective purpose then our interests are wholly subjective.
This has extraordinary implications so let’s mull over an example. It is in Jim’s interest to use his legs to run away from the knife-wielding cannibal as fast as possible. And it is in the cannibal’s interests to catch Jim and use his legs as the centerpiece of that evening’s feast. The disagreement over the best use for Jim’s legs brings us back to the deeper question. What are Jim and his pursuer here for? Is that something simply determined by whatever their personal interests happen to be? Or the interests of their society? Or are there facts about the best interests of human beings which are objective and obtain irrespective of whether any human beings happen to agree that this is the case?
I believe we all recognize the truth of “It is evil to kill a healthy male human being simply because you would prefer cannibalizing his legs to eating at Outback Steakhouse”. But when we say this is certainly true are we merely doing so in the same way that we say “It is certainly true that vanilla tastes better than chocolate”?
I think not. Nay, I say, obviously not. The cannibal’s pursuit of Jim simply because he would prefer to eat Jim’s legs is wrong whether the pursuit is occurring in the back alley of a non-descript North American neighborhood or in the jungles of Irian Jaya. And it is true whether the cannibal is an employee at Boeing or the chief of a stone-age tribe of cannibals. The evil of the cannibal seeking to eat Jim is, to put it bluntly, a metaphysically necessary truth. And to those who deny this, and reduce the world to a welter of conflicting interests in which “The Lord of the Flies” is kept at bay by an arbitrary social contract, I say “Surely you can’t be serious.”
