Purpose in the Universe

Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose but human beings are irrelevant to it. <em>Purpose in the Universe</em> develops<br>a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. The book borrows traditional theist arguments to defend a cosmic purpose. These include cosmological teleological ontological meta-ethical and mystical arguments. It<br>then borrows traditional atheist arguments to reject a human-centred purpose. These include arguments based on evil diversity and the scale of the universe. Mulgan also highlights connections between morality and metaphysics arguing that evaluative premises play a crucial and underappreciated<br>role in metaphysical debates about the existence of God and Ananthropocentric Purposivism mutually supports an austere consequentialist morality based on objective values. He concludes that by drawing on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions a non-human-centred cosmic purpose can<br>ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices our view of the moral universe and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that while it is about<br><em>something</em> the universe is not about <em>us</em>.<br>