The beginning and the end: the meaning of life in a cosmological perspective

Abstract

Where does it all come from? Where are we going? Are we alone in the universe? What is good and what is evil? The scientific narrative of cosmic evolution demands that we tackle such big questions with a cosmological perspective. I tackle the first question in Chapters 4-6; the second in Chapters 7-8; the third in Chapter 9 and the fourth in Chapter 10. However, where do we start to answer such questions? In Chapters 1-3, I elaborate the concept of worldview and argue that we should aim at constructing comprehensive and coherent worldviews. In Chapter 4, I identify seven fundamental challenges to any ultimate explanation. I conclude that our explanations tend to fall in two cognitive attractors, the point or the cycle. In Chapter 5, I focus on the free parameters issue, while Chapter 6 is a critical analysis of the fine-tuning issue. I conclude that fine-tuning is a conjecture and that we need to further study how typical our universe is. This opens a research endeavor that I call artificial cosmogenesis. In Chapter 7, I show the importance of artificial cosmogenesis from extrapolating the future of scientific simulations. I then analyze two other evolutionary explanations of fine-tuning in Chapter 8: Cosmological Natural Selection and the broader scenario of Cosmological Artificial Selection. In Chapter 9, I inquire into the search for extraterrestrials and conclude that some binary star systems are good candidates. Since those putative beings feed on stars, I call them starivores. The question of their artificiality remains open, but I propose a prize to further continue and motivate the scientific assessment of this hypothesis. In Chapter 10, I explore foundations to build a cosmological ethics and conclude that the ultimate good is the infinite continuation of the evolutionary process. Appendix I summarizes my position and Appendix II provides argumentative maps of the entire thesis.