{"id":7541,"date":"2011-10-07T12:56:06","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T19:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=7541"},"modified":"2011-10-07T12:56:06","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T19:56:06","slug":"can-naturalists-believe-in-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/07\/can-naturalists-believe-in-meaning\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Naturalists Believe in Meaning?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have my answer (&#8220;yes, but not by finding meaning `out there&#8217; in the world&#8221;), which I hope to write about more soon.  In the meantime, listen to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philostv.com\/owen-flanagan-and-alex-rosenberg\/\">a great conversation between philosophers Owen Flanagan and Alex Rosenberg<\/a> from Philosophy TV. &#8220;What there is, and all there is, are bosons and fermions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philostv.com\/owen-flanagan-and-alex-rosenberg\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2011\/10\/philotv.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"213\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7544\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Both discussants have written really good books.  Rosenberg recently came out with <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Atheists-Guide-Reality-Enjoying-Illusions\/dp\/0393080234\/\">The Atheist&#8217;s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions<\/a><\/em>, while I very much enjoyed Flanagan&#8217;s earlier book <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Really-Hard-Problem-Material-Bradford\/dp\/0262512483\/\">The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Natural World<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Empirically, of course, naturalists often lead very enjoying and fulfilled lives.  Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canberratimes.com.au\/news\/lifestyle\/style\/food-and-wine\/restless-experimenter\/2126167.aspx?storypage=0\">a great profile of newly minted Laureate Brian Schmidt<\/a>, in his capacity as a cook and winemaker as well as an astronomer.  And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/10\/07\/opinion\/the-universe-dark-energy-and-us.html\">here&#8217;s Bob Kirshner<\/a>, writing to the NYT from Friendship, Maine, about the meaning of dark energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have my answer (&#8220;yes, but not by finding meaning `out there&#8217; in the world&#8221;), which I hope to write about more soon. In the meantime, listen to a great conversation between philosophers Owen Flanagan and Alex Rosenberg from Philosophy TV. &#8220;What there is, and all there is, are bosons and fermions.&#8221; Both discussants have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}