Article The extinction of the human species won’t matter

[C C]

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/20...atter.html

EXCERPTS: In the case of Homo sapiens there is even less reason to care about its ending, because a species is merely a taxonomic unit within which creatures of similar and compatible physiology can be grouped to distinguish them from members of other sets when that seems helpful (other definitions are available). The human species lacks the integrated psychological cohesion of an individual human life. It contains but is not reducible to supra-individual entities like societies. It has no ‘life projects’. It does not really exist in any meaningful sense – less than a tree, or even a rock – and so can have no interest even in its own persistence.

Neither do any individual humans have an interest in the persistence of the human species. Individual humans may care about their children’s future, and about the intergenerational social institutions, like countries, which they hope will secure that future. If there were no more humans then those things we actually care about would necessarily also end. But we still would not care about the end of the human species itself.

[...] It may help to separate ourselves from the typical disaster movie scenario. When I say that humanity is definitely going to end, that ending doesn’t have to be in fire by asteroid or nuclear war anytime soon. While it is necessary (a fact in all possible universes) that there will at some point, again, be no humans, it is not necessary that this will involve the unpleasantness of mass destruction for ourselves and people we care about. Humans could simply evolve over many thousands or millions of years towards some post-human form, upload to the cloud, or otherwise transform into creatures no longer reasonably classifiable as Homo sapiens.

If you – like me – cannot see why it should matter whether or not there are creatures physiologically compatible with us still around in millions of years, then you have seen my point. When you abstract from the emotional hooks of disaster movie scenarios  – the exciting contemplation of gigadeaths and the destruction of all we have come to care about – it is clear that there really is nothing about the persistence of Homo sapiens itself that matters.

[...] One can extend the point in a more philosophical sounding way. So long as there are human beings in the universe, there will remain that peculiar kind of consciousness that is able to value things, for example to see form and beauty in the rings of Saturn. Thus, a universe with human beings in it necessarily has more value (because more valuing is going on) than a universe without them.

One response to this would be to point to non-human sentient life, which certainly exists on Earth and probably does elsewhere too (and in our post-human forms). Humans may be particularly active and sophisticated valuers, but we are not so unique. It is a constitutive feature of all life that it creates interests and hence the phenomenon of ‘mattering’. Sunlight matters to plants, for example, and will continue to do so even when there are no more humans. The extinction of Homo sapiens does not mean the extinction of mattering from the universe.

A more Epicurean response would be to recall that death is simply the extinction of experience itself. For in a universe where the light went out there would be no one left to notice. There would be no perspective from which to compare the universe with and without the light of human understanding, and no possibility of caring about it one way or the other... (MORE - missing detail)

[Magical Realist]

I see what he's saying. Often when I think of a global extinction event, like an asteroid or the Sun blowing up, I find myself merely lamenting the great works of art and literature in museums and libraries around the world that will be lost forever. The Mona Lisa in flames? Michaelangelo's David shattering? The destruction of all of Shakespeare's writings? Also all those films and music. Things which compared to all the other junk we've cluttered our planet with have practically zero purpose. Maybe this is a clue: that man's longing for being around millions of years from now won't be because of some great purpose or function he has for the universe. He will be like all the wonders of the cosmos that came to be for no reason whatsoever. Just like the universe itself. The necessary senselessness of our being here at all is irrevocably tied into the necessary senselessness--the infinitely-exuberant child's play-- of Being itself.

"The Aeon is a child at play with colored balls"---Heraclitus

[Zinjanthropos]

The human species lacks the integrated psychological cohesion of an individual human life. It contains but is not reducible to supra-individual entities like societies. It has no ‘life projects’. It does not really exist in any meaningful sense – less than a tree, or even a rock – and so can have no interest even in its own

Speaks of our insignificance in the universe.

[Syne]

... Humans could simply evolve over many thousands or millions of years towards some post-human form, upload to the cloud, or otherwise transform into creatures no longer reasonably classifiable as Homo sapiens.

Then it would be so gradual that we would not recognize ourselves as other than human. We would still be homo sapiens ("thinking man").
Transhumanism, like uploading to the cloud, is by no means guaranteed to happen. No faster way to make yourself a slave than to voluntarily upload yourself into a system you have no control over. But many foolish people will "own nothing and be happy."

If you – like me – cannot see why it should matter whether or not there are creatures physiologically compatible with us still around in millions of years,...

That's a different argument from whether the "human species" or homo sapiens will exist. There would likely be enough genetic drift, in humans millions of years from now, to make them incompatible with us for breeding.

[...] One can extend the point in a more philosophical sounding way. So long as there are human beings in the universe, there will remain that peculiar kind of consciousness that is able to value things, for example to see form and beauty in the rings of Saturn. Thus, a universe with human beings in it necessarily has more value (because more valuing is going on) than a universe without them.

One response to this would be to point to non-human sentient life, which certainly exists on Earth and probably does elsewhere too (and in our post-human forms). Humans may be particularly active and sophisticated valuers, but we are not so unique. It is a constitutive feature of all life that it creates interests and hence the phenomenon of ‘mattering’. Sunlight matters to plants, for example, and will continue to do so even when there are no more humans. The extinction of Homo sapiens does not mean the extinction of mattering from the universe.

Ah, semantic games... that obscure the huge difference between "valuing" as a choice and "mattering" as a fact of physical survival alone. This kind of "mattering" is how gravity matters to a rock. It is a physical fact, but doesn't add anything to the universe beyond that fact.

So no, "non-human sentient life" is no substitute for human valuing.


But it's a great argument if you are already a nihilist.