New Podcast Release: Rebecca Goldstein

Rebecca’s work has long explored the intersection of science, ethics, and the human search for meaning. Trained first in physics and later in philosophy, she brings to moral questions a sensibility shaped by the second law of thermodynamics, Spinoza’s naturalism, and decades of reflection on what it means to justify one’s life to oneself. Her recent book centres on what she calls “the mattering instinct” - the deeply human need not merely to survive, but to feel that one’s life counts.

In our conversation, we begin with entropy and end with her own candid reflections on whether she has lived well. Along the way, we discuss why knowledge and kindness can be understood as counter-entropic, why human beings are “matter longing to matter,” how different people seek to secure their sense of worth, and how the search for mattering can go wrong, personally, socially, and politically.

Below is an edited and condensed version of our discussion, organised thematically for clarity.

Life as Resistance to Entropy

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: In The Mattering Instinct, you write that a life well lived “joins forces with life in its resistance to entropy.” Could you explain what you mean?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: I came into philosophy from physics, and I’ve long been fascinated with the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy is nature’s scorecard for disorder. In closed systems, entropy increases. Disorder grows, and eventually the system breaks down.

Living systems are different. They are not closed. They take in free energy, in the form of food or sunlight, and use it to resist entropy. So long as we live, we are counter-entropic. We put up a good fight, though eventually entropy wins.

What does this have to do with a life well lived? It’s a leap, but I think we intuitively recognise that some things are better because they move in the direction of order rather than disorder. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Clarity is better than confusion. Kindness is better than cruelty. These are counter-entropic.

I don’t mean that we can derive morality from physics. We can’t derive an “ought” from an “is.” But entropy offers a way of capturing something about flourishing. It doesn’t undermine our ethical intuitions. It gives them metaphorical support.

PETER SINGER: So this is a broad metaphor, not a strict scientific law about how we ought to live?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: Yes, of course. It’s metaphorical. It’s a way of getting a grasp on what is better. The meaning of life is another phrase that I could never quite get hold of. But thinking of life as resistance, as being on the side of flourishing, helps me think about it.

“Matter Longing to Matter”

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Where does mattering come in?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: I define mattering as deserving of attention. We talk about what matters and who matters. It’s a normative concept.

What we are, I would say, is matter longing to matter. That captures something unusual about our species. We can ask: do I matter? We are wired to pay attention to ourselves. That’s built into us. But we can also step outside ourselves and ask whether we deserve all that attention.

From that capacity for self-reflection, we become justificatory creatures. We seek values that can justify our lives to ourselves.

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Is there a basis for believing that we matter, beyond the fact that we think we do?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: The question arises because of self-reflection. We question our own self-mattering. I’ve spent a lot of time studying depression, and one characteristic statement is, “I don’t matter.” It matters to the depressed person that they don’t matter.

In the United States, the suicide hotline address is “youmatter.com.” That shows how fundamental this need is. Some people seek social mattering. Others seek it through work, through achievement, through religion. I’ve spoken to people about this for over forty years. The diversity of responses fascinates me.

PETER SINGER: And how do you strive to matter?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: I don’t know that I matter at all. But I strive to matter through trying to understand how everything hangs together. Wilfrid Sellars defined philosophy as trying to see how things, in the broadest sense, hang together. That is the mattering project for philosophers.

The Mattering Map

PETER SINGER: You describe four major “continents” on what you call the mattering map. Could you outline them?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: It’s an empirical hypothesis, based on decades of talking to people and reading biographies. There are four major strategies: transcendence, socialising, heroic striving, and competition.

Transcenders ground their mattering in something beyond the empirical world. It might be God or a spiritual order. I was raised Orthodox Jewish. For the first thirteen years of my life, I never doubted how much I mattered. God was watching. Every aspect of life was governed by law. It was constraining, but it was powerful.

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: How did you lose your faith?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: It didn’t make moral sense to me. Suffering didn’t make sense. My family in Hungary was destroyed by the Nazis. When I was thirteen, I read Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian. He dissected the arguments for God’s existence. That had a profound effect on me.

PETER SINGER: And the other continents?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: Socialisers understand mattering as mattering to others. That might mean family and friends. But it can also mean strangers. Fame is a form of mattering to strangers. Many young people say they would give up relationships for fame. Fame can feel like evidence that you deserve attention.

I once heard of a Nobel laureate who was happy for fifteen minutes after receiving the prize. Then he remembered that others had won it too. The happiness ended there.

Heroic strivers pursue standards of excellence that allow them to reconcile themselves with themselves. It might be intellectual, artistic, athletic. It doesn’t have to be grand. It just has to be something that gets you out of bed in the morning.

Wittgenstein is an example. He was often unhappy, but his reported last words were, “Tell them I’ve lived a wonderful life.” In his notebook he wrote, “I don’t know why we’re here, but I know it’s not to be happy.”

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: But would we want such a life for our children?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: Perhaps not. But I’m struck by the diversity among us. Some people are outliers. They pursue projects we might not choose. Given Wittgenstein’s temperament, perhaps he had no real choice.

The fourth group are competitors. For them, mattering is a zero-sum game. If others matter more, they matter less. This can be individual or group-based. Some people feel their mattering is being taken away by social progress. I sought out a former neo-Nazi to understand this psychology. His sense of mattering was grounded in resentment.

Competitiveness can be destructive, but not all competition is noxious. Psychologists distinguish different forms. Some competitors achieve remarkable things.

Mattering and Happiness

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: How does feeling that you matter differ from feeling happy?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: We need to distinguish episodic pleasure from life satisfaction. Life satisfaction involves stepping back and judging your life as a whole. It’s a reflective judgment: I am living the way I ought to be living.

Animals experience pleasure. But this reflective assessment seems uniquely human. It has everything to do with the mattering instinct. It’s about justifying your life to yourself.

Have You Lived Well?

PETER SINGER: We always end by asking our guests to reflect on their own lives. Do you feel you have lived well?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: No, I don’t think I have lived well. I think I’ve made progress toward living better.

I became an atheist at thirteen. Soon after, I became a utilitarian. I decided that I could continue living according to Orthodox Jewish law because breaking away would cause my family pain. I made a vow to wait until my parents had died. I didn’t believe, but I lived as if I did. It was at a tremendous cost to my integrity.

I later realised the toll this took on my sense of autonomy. I was very unhappy. I’ve since heard from many people in similar situations, asking what to do. I don’t advise them to do what I did.

I’m also conflict-averse. After I published my first novel, there was a negative reaction within philosophy. I withdrew from the philosophical community. That was painful and contributed to my sense of not having lived well.

PETER SINGER: And yet that novel contained the germ of your mattering project. It must be hard to regret publishing it.

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: I don’t know. It led me away from the philosophical path I thought I would follow. But it also led to this project. Perhaps there is a happy ending. I don’t know.

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Why not? There might be.

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: I don’t know.