In it’s bracketed existential sense of the most probable reference. This most probable meaning is attained by a process of eliminating all others, starting with the least probable. If all others can be eliminated except the most probable , then it’s meaning is almost certain within that context, or, situation.
I guess you mean a subjective experience and understanding of a certain situation that is considered as being the said sense. Is that right?
Yes but ! more: meaning becomes certain if the sense of the experience and the context (situation) are most probable .
For example put a person into a situation,. about which most people in that situation would feel
predictably, then the !meaning of that sense of feeling would become certain knowledge. The least possible meanings are eliminated to gain knowledge.
Life !always makes sense out of the most probable situation
and it most likely known reaction to that sense.
Even the most senseless and confusing life can make sense if taken from the knowledge of a most likely and probable response to such a situation. Then it becomes rational and meaningful. The subjectivity has become one with its object and it becomes meaningful, and makes sense.
If you asked a wolf whether it makes sense to have offspring and this wolf could speak, what would the wolf answer?
If you asked a dog whether it makes sense to have offspring and this dog could speak, what would the dog answer?
The wolf and dog might look at one another and in unison they might say: “Yes”. Then they would explain how it makes a lot of sense especially when they’ve seen how their offspring have grown and adapted and learned what they have in order to survive and to perpetuate the species. They think to their selves: “We’ve taught our babies well”.
How much less meaning would it have been for humans had the wolves and the dogs aborted their future offspring. What companionship, what love, what guidance, what awesome beauty would be lacking in this world without the wolf and the dog.
What they couldn’t understand though is how they can value their own more so than many of the human animals are capable of valuing their own.
Yesterday while out walking, I saw this young (?) deer across the street in the golf course right off the main drag. I was so amazed by it. I didn’t want to leave it - kept talking to it from across the street though I’m sure it had no idea of what was happening within me except that it would look over at me at times. So sad that they are obviously losing their habitats.
"Making sense’ is like beauty. It is in the eye of the beholder.
Please do not forget: Not merely desperation and nightmare are associated with the senselessness of life - but also sensemaking celebration of life, lust for life, life in the here and now because of consciousness in the here and now, … and so on.
Probably it is just the negative meaning of life that shows (and hopefully convinces) us that we should prefer the positive meaning of life. So, for example, the more you are reminded of your death, the more you are also reminded of your life in the sense of a positive meaning.
I think that this is also the true meaning of Martin Heidegger’s “Sein zum Tode” (“being to death”), because he did not mean that it is “positive” to die, but he meant that philosophy and science of the 19th century had objectivated the deaths of the others - but not of the self, the “I”. Heidegger’s theory of death stopped the theoretical cynisms of the 19th century (for example: the concept of revolution, the imagination of evolution, the concept of selection, of the struggle for life, of the surviving of the fittest, the idea of progress, … and so on ), because: what they made thinkable was the death of the others - thus: not of the self, the “I” -, and hereby they caused suppression and forgottenness of one’s own death. The theories of the 19th century were a gift for the war industry, because the soldiers should not be reminded of their own death. The military is the biggest guarantor when it comes to suppression and forgottenness of one’s own death. And during the the First World War - thus: in the early 20th century, when those theories of the 19th century were still intact - each soldier thought that merely others but not he himself had to die. (This is also the meaning of Heidegger’s “Man”: the “Man” prevents the courage to the fear of the death - the “Man” means the normal inauthenticity, that each one is the others and no one is him-/herself.)
Do you know what I mean?
Yes, I think so, but from the point of view of Heidegger’s successor, Sartre. It is inauthentic for the average soldier to think of his own death, since only those of others’ death has he been ever concerned about.He simply can not think of his own death, b
ecause he does not understand himself in his own life.
This form of the inauthentic life can be seen in all forms of soldiers’ life, they do not even understand why they are fighting.
There is no meaning for soldiers, except that which subsists in the color of the enemy, and like a bull who
reacts with anger at the color of red waved at him,
his reactions are peripheral and topical. He is not allowed to look beneath the surface, even if he could, and the ones who can and do, are quickly got rid of,
one way or another.
It makes more sense for a general to order his troops to combat, or even a marine Sargent.
The pawns in a conflict, are assigned roles, and even the King, has limited understanding into his authentic
participation. It used to be said of Kings, that God
only knew the reasons for and the meaning of the struggle, but with gods dead, Kings dead, there remains little leeway to throw evaluation back into
those who precipitate conflict, therefore, a very
astute propaganda machine seven to convince that authority rests with the man, the head of the family, to protect those, who are loved and protected by
him. Man is held responsible to develop his
understanding, out of the sense he can make of his own place in the organization of his family, community, and in this way the question of a
apprehension of his take on the meaning of conflict
usually rests on himself, but usually his father, and his father, the tradition.
The meaning of life is dictated by the traditional view of accepted behavior.
They say this is changing, but as with all forms of change, undercurrents of tradition can quickly reverse the course taken, to the most heavily,
historically vested, and probable course of action.
Not all soldiers are stupid, because there are many averagely intelligent and some very intelligent soldiers too.
Life means forming spheres, doesn’t it?
Absolutely, since the idea of an absolutely straight line is as mistaken as a totally uninformed soldier.
Philosophically important questions are - for example - questions that deal with something like the “birth process”:
- How does man in the world come to his world?
- How does this “adventic animal” man find the expression under the terms of himself?
- How does the world honor the promise that is given to man?
- How does man come to the faith / confidence / trust therewith he can give promise to the world?
To my mind the closest analogy I can give, to the first question (out of which the other three flow), is that of a seed. Cosmologically, the consciousness of the world must arise out of the brute, inert matter, unable to realize it’s self without the development of higher consciousness. In a sense, nothing really exists, which can not be perceived. Existence here in Sartre’s vocabulary passes the cogito ergo sum, into the esse est percipii, to exist is to perceive, and that means perception is the predicate to existence.
It can be said both ways, ‘to exist is to perceive’ and existence is the predicate, because existence and perception are so closely bound to each other, embedded into each other.
The really interesting question is, whether there may be inorganic perception, or, preception, where the difference will take maybe another thousand years to unravel.
The fact that microchips are made of inorganic material, but may advance to organic material, shows the narrowing of that difference. Both may be used as analogues, however, and the time for that may be fairly near.
Maybe every kind of “revolution” is a “repetition of birth” on another stage; accordingly there are “repetitions of abortive births / miscarriages” too. Perhaps life is somehow a “permanent (abortive) birth and repetition of (abortive) birth”. Humans have to arrive. They are arriving (“adventic”) animals. And if they have arrived, they start again - straightaway. They are always underway.
Fellas, does one or maybe any of you ever stop to think that all thought is meaning?
How could a world without meaning be discussed if ‘world’ and ‘meaning’ already preclude it?
Do you believe in such an “inorganic perception, where the difference will take maybe another thousand years to unravel”?
Fixed Cross
Is thought meaning or does it eventually give rise to meaning or to a lack of meaning?
Your statement for me kind of puts the cart before the horse for me.
I’m not quite grasping your question here. It doesn’t make sense to me but I may just be misunderstanding you.
Anyway, in and of themselves, those two words, world and meaning, are simply words.
The word "experience’ comes to me.
An individual’s personal human experience may lead him to a discussion of a world without meaning aside from how he views it in an intelligent detached impersonal way.
Again, I may not be grasping what you’re really saying.
Yes I do , crystals of all kinds are carbon based, and so is silicon. It’s nature’s irony, perhaps, that high artificial intelligence with the microchip short circuits the process. Instead of carbon based crystals like diamonds being utilized one way, or lasers utilizing rubies go another formal way, it makes no real difference. The potential for intelligence exists also, one way, or the other. (Organic-inorganic). It is quite possible that when Carl Jung described his illuminating experience when very young, of sitting on a rock, and not really sure whether he felt that he was sitting on a rock, or whether he was the rock upon which he was sitting were any different; is an example of it.
But what I meant was more like this: Do you believe in the inorganic perception as a perception of God?
Fixed, Arcturus,: discussions can be held with ‘meaning’ already precluding it, while the world can not be precluded.
If we talk about the world in a meaningless way, the world it’self is not precluded, because the world is not intrinsically meaningful in the first place. You can not preclude something, which has never had an intrinsically inclusive meaning in the first place.
You may object to this on the ground that there may be a difference between talking meaninglessly, yet coherently, vis ., by using normally associated ideas, words. Or, you may say that there may be a conflation with disassociated words, where the difference could not be appreciated. Or, thirdly, there may be a verbal collage, with absolutely no meaningful content derivable, where the literal construction appears merely a random pick and use of any word in a menu of words.
Only of the latter, can it be said, that it makes no sense.
Yes I lean that way, because, for instance: a tree has been the object of so much preoccupation of sentient beings: bearer off rip unit, object of aesthetic appreciation, the use of its trunk for building, the bearer of the fruit which condemned mankind, the tree of life…
Whatever is appreciated so very much has a great intrinsic value, and it is, as if, there is a sense of awe going on here, which can not escape it’s binary function. The appreciation, it seems, or almost seems, is a two way transaction, as if the tree was actually made for man.
This is getting close, I think of sensing a relationship of some kind between inorganic, lower and higher organic substance. I don’t accept clear demarcations between various levels of structure, sine the organization of matter determines the it’s particular evolution.
If we start this way of looking at it reversely, from man down, the connection is still there, but in a different form. At the other extreme, there is God.