Questions by The Freethinkers Alliance
Introduction
What makes a human life meaningful? Can morality and human flourishing be grounded in reason rather than religious belief? And how can philosophy, science, and literature help us understand ourselves and the world around us?
These questions have occupied philosophers, scientists, and writers for centuries. They also lie at the heart of humanism: the idea that human lives matter and that reason, compassion, and critical inquiry can help us build a better world.
In this written Q&A with The Freethinkers Alliance, philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein explores the foundations of humanism, the relationship between science and ethics, the importance of literature in understanding others, and the challenges of distinguishing rational beliefs from those shaped by cultural and emotional influences.
Drawing on her work in philosophy, physics, and literature, Goldstein discusses her concept of the “mattering instinct,” the philosophical influence of Baruch Spinoza, and the importance of remaining intellectually open in a world where certainty is often difficult to achieve.
Questions and Answers
1. What does humanism mean to you, and how has your understanding of it evolved through your work in philosophy and literature?
Rebecca Goldstein:
I understand humanism as the commitment to human flourishing as a fundamental moral requirement, which doesn’t preclude, of course, being morally committed to the flourishing of non-human forms of life, not to speak of the flourishing of the planet.
But humanism, as the name itself tells us, has something to say specifically about our species: namely, that every single last one of us morally matters and exactly to the same degree; that this mattering doesn’t depend on bloodline, creed, or permission from a throne or an altar; and that the right of all humans to flourish in the unfurling of their possibilities can be defended on purely secular grounds.
This can be achieved by appealing to our capacity for critical thinking, allowing us a certain reflective detachment from our personal point of view so that we might critically evaluate it, which is to say, offer reasons for it and consider reasons against it.
I would also argue that not only can the core of humanism be defended on purely secular grounds, but that the pragmatic consequences that have followed the creation of humanist institutions—which include democracy and the rule of law, freedom of speech and of the press, public education and universal literacy, civil liberties, and the recognition of human rights—themselves speak to the value and potency of humanism. People flourish when these humanist institutions flourish.
I am afraid that to answer fully how my understanding of humanism has evolved through my work in philosophy and literature would require a book-length autobiography, since the story of my life is very much the story of my evolving understanding of humanism, culminating in my latest book, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us, to which I’ve just added an afterword for the not-yet-released paperback edition, which explicitly makes the case for humanism.
And this autobiography would include not only what I have learned from my work in philosophy and literature, but also from my beginning passion, which was for mathematics and physics.
My PhD is in philosophy of science, and I spent a certain amount of time in my PhD dissertation explaining why the second law of thermodynamics, which describes the relentless increase in entropy, is the supreme law of physics, as it has been characterized by many scientists, including Einstein. Entropy is, loosely speaking, a measure of the disorder of a system.
I always suspected, even back when I was an undergraduate studying physics, that the second law held implications not only for biology, as was already recognized by the physicists Ludwig Boltzmann and Erwin Schrödinger, but also, even more specifically and poignantly, for the biological creatures that we humans are.
The second law has much to say about the human need for meaning and, as I argue, it also offers a way to judge how well a person is living their life.
Given the second law of thermodynamics, we can understand that the default natural states in human lives are pretty bleak: ignorance, confusion, poverty, deprivation, starvation, illness, suffering, decay, and death. All of these are states of high entropy.
Conversely, knowledge, clarity, cooperation, tolerance, peace, rationality, civility, justice, health, creativity, and love are all low-entropy states demanding counter-entropic, energy-requiring resistance.
The effects a person’s goals have on entropy, even if exceedingly local, provide a criterion, as objective as any that can be offered, for how well a person is pursuing their life. Are a person’s goals working in the direction of life to resist the increase of entropy, or rather are their goals in alignment with the second law, creating even more confusion and suffering?
I offer this ethical criterion in the spirit of the philosopher Spinoza, whose magnum opus, Ethics, first offered us the hope of being able to use the laws of nature to provide guidance in how we pursue our lives.
He gave us this hope, even though he was born in the seventeenth century, when modern science was in its infancy. He didn’t—and he couldn’t—know the science that we have gone on to discover since his day, including, most importantly, the second law of thermodynamics.
You also mention literature, and here, too, my work has aided my progress in understanding the ramifications of humanism.
In fact, it was my work on my very first novel, The Mind-Body Problem, that first alerted me to how important and life-shaping our goal of redeeming ourselves in our own eyes is—what I’ve come to call “the mattering instinct”—and how this mattering instinct can spawn both the very worst and the very best in us.
What we humans are, in our innermost core, are creatures of matter who long to matter.
In fact, one of the deepest manifestations of this longing is the denial that we are indeed creatures of matter, rather than composed of some more ethereal, godly stuff.
All the more important, then, to take our direction from a philosopher like Spinoza and use our scientific knowledge of matter to help guide us toward a better life, both individually and collectively.
2. What role does literature play in helping us understand the inner lives, moral struggles, and perspectives of people whose experiences differ from our own?
Rebecca Goldstein:
We’re a gregarious species, dependent for our very survival on our relationships with others.
Not only are we gregarious, but also we are what biologists call altricial: we are immature for a very long time, the wiring of our exceedingly complicated brains taking a long time to be completed. Our frontal cortex, the seat of our full maturity, isn’t fully wired until our early twenties.
This makes us all the more dependent on other members of our species.
And as an adaptation, we’ve evolved what psychologists call a theory of mind, which is the capacity to understand that others among us have their own beliefs and emotions, sometimes differing from our own. It’s in our interests, as gregarious creatures dependent on one another, to be able to figure out others’ emotions and beliefs.
I believe that this is why we love stories so much, since they feed our desire to understand, and even to feel, the inner lives of others.
We’re free to exercise our empathic participation in others’ lives in a purer way in stories than in our own lives, where our own self-interests can get in the way of our capacity for feeling for others.
To the extent that literature can push us into the reflective disassociation from our own point of view that I spoke about in answer to your first question, it’s pushing us toward the ethics of humanism.
3. How can we distinguish well-supported beliefs from ideas we accept because they are emotionally comforting or culturally familiar?
Rebecca Goldstein:
Here is a simple test to offer people: try to imagine that you hadn’t been born into the family and culture that you in fact have. Do you think you would still have the beliefs that you do?
If not, then do you think that you could offer that alternative self any reasons that would convince them to have the beliefs that you do?
This counterfactual experiment can be the beginning of trying to distinguish between those beliefs that can be grounded in reason and those beliefs that aren’t.
I myself was born into a very religious family, and this counterfactual way of thinking was my gateway to rejecting many of the beliefs in which I’d been indoctrinated.
But I’ve found that with the most fervent of believers, this kind of counterfactual thinking can’t even get off the ground.
Their whole sense of themselves is so tightly bound up in their religious point of view that they can’t even entertain the possibility of an alternative self that believes differently. You could say that their theory of mind has been severely blunted.
It’s extremely important to understand what has to be overcome for a fervently believing person to make their way to the distinction you’re drawing in your question.
Emotionally comforting beliefs, the kind that make us feel more at home in the world, are the hardest to shake.
And no beliefs are more emotionally comforting than the metaphysical beliefs that religions offer, assuring the believer that they had been created with purpose by the transcendent being who has created all, and that therefore the believer has a role to play in the narrative of eternity and perhaps even in the eventual redemption of all of human history.
Without religion, anybody who held such a grandiose vision of themselves might well be diagnosed with a mental disorder; but with religion, such a sense of cosmic significance is nothing exceptional.
It is precisely how religion is designed to make a believer feel.
4. Is there an enduring tension between the human desire for certainty and the intellectual responsibility to remain open to revision?
Rebecca Goldstein:
At its strongest, the sense of certainty precludes the possibility of falsifying evidence.
We’re rarely in a position to justifiably occupy such a position—unless, of course, one’s belief is tautological, in which case it tells us about the meaning of words rather than about the facts of the world.
But even in the field that has the most legitimate claim to certainty—namely mathematics—there can be stunning surprises.
I have a book about one of those stunning surprises: The Proof and the Paradox of Kurt Gödel, about the famous and very surprising Incompleteness Theorems.
But when it comes to facts about the world—what the philosopher David Hume called “matters of fact and existence”—there can be little certainty, and the rational point of view is to keep an open mind.
But I would push back against there being a universal human desire for certainty. I think this desire varies greatly among us.
Yes, we may want a certain degree of certainty in our own lives; at the very least, we want the stability and safety that’s required to lead a satisfactory life, and we long to be certain of this stability and safety.
But even when it comes to our own lives, there’s great variability between those who are open to new experiences and those who cringe from them.
In fact, the degree of openness to new experiences is one of the five traits that psychologists count as among the basic ingredients of our personalities, all highly heritable.
And when it comes to more disinterested beliefs, not bearing directly on our personal lives, then here, too, we differ over how much certainty we crave.
There are people who love to wrestle with the kinds of questions that all but preclude certainty, people who not only can tolerate a high degree of uncertainty but even relish it.
We call such people philosophers.
About Rebecca Goldstein
Rebecca Goldstein is an American philosopher and novelist whose work explores the connections between philosophy, science, literature, morality, and humanism.
With a PhD in philosophy of science, she has written extensively about questions of human meaning, reason, and the relationship between scientific understanding and ethical life.
Her notable works include The Mind-Body Problem, The Proof and the Paradox of Kurt Gödel, and The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us.
Her writing brings philosophical ideas into conversation with the human experiences, questions, and relationships that shape our lives.
About The Freethinkers Alliance
The Freethinkers Alliance is an independent platform promoting scientific literacy, skepticism, humanism, critical thinking, and evidence-based public discussion.
Through expert contributions, thoughtful conversations, and educational articles, the platform aims to encourage readers to question assumptions, examine ideas through reason, and explore different perspectives with intellectual curiosity.
Editorial Note
This written Q&A is based on responses provided by Rebecca Goldstein to questions submitted by The Freethinkers Alliance.
The answers are attributed to Rebecca Goldstein. The introduction and other editorial material were prepared by The Freethinkers Alliance. Minor formatting and language adjustments have been made for readability while seeking to preserve the substance of her responses.
Questions by: The Freethinkers Alliance
Website: https://freethinkersalliance.com/
