‘Essentially’ doesn’t personalize what it modifies. It means…
It is an objective adverb. IOW it means that those are the qualities of the thing not merely his experience of them. Though maybe I misunderstood your point. Something might seem meaningful, but essentially, it is not that. It’s real nature is meaningless.
Notice here, he denies that he is saying that their values are ‘inherently’ meaningless.
My emphasis.
He denies it but uses a synonym elsewhere to describe values in general, and here in the Buddhist thread.
And that’s a valid philosophical viewpoint. It’s not that he makes the claim, it’s that he denies making the claim.
And there is a big difference between saying that one is not convinced something is X and stating that something is not X. Since he denied the latter, I quoted him saying the latter. That life was in essence meaningless. That’s its real nature is meaningless.
I really don’t know how to get more smoking gun than this. I never said X. Quote of person saying X.
Sure. I mean, I’ve seen the ‘all rational people criterion’ aimed at morals and then also at processes that might make one feel better. I hadn’t seen it aimed at meaning, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
He asserts that they are essentially meaningless. He doesn’t say that he hasn’t found it himself. He may say that elsewhere.
I would not be surprised at all if on other occasions he personalizes it and frame things in skeptical terms and/or in terms of what he has not found. But then he also allows himself to dismiss things in objective terms as if they do not exist. He said he never said something, yet, in the very thread he denies saying such things, he said precisely that a number of times.
I mean, if we had a man in a relationship who made it clear on many occasions that he thought women and men were equal, but every now and then said to his wife something like ‘Well, of course you’d say that, all women are C____s’ , I don’t think one has to believe he isn’t sexist or, in this case, making objective claims. One can have contradictory beliefs. One can also be confused about what one believes.
We are not monolithic creatures and I think it’s a disservice to everyone to pretend he doesn’t act like an objectivist, for example, when at other times he denies it.
In this instance he clearly made statements that SHOULD lead someone to believe what Felix said he believed. I mean, even a tiny bit of integrity would have led him to concede that he made a lot of statements that would give any human being the impression he meant that, but he communicated poorly.
But no, he responded with ‘I never said that.’
Well, sorry, he did. And not just once. And I stopped looking, just in this thread, after I had a number of examples.
Notice how he responds to you…
So, as quoted he claimed several times that it is absolutely necessary that human interactions/human existence/the world is meaningless.
And then he tries to shift the onus.
I didn’t say X.
What I meant was X (again).
If you think that’s wrong, demonstrate it to all rational people.
Notice where he skips demonstrating his position, one he also denies he has, to all rational people.
I do understand he believes people may think something is meaningful.