Why do we have an instinctual tendency to avoid death?
[F]ear of death, however powerful it may be and however useful it may be as a motive for seeking peace and, hence, law with teeth in it, cannot be the fundamental experience. It presupposes an even more fundamental one: that life is good. The deepest experience is the pleasant experience of existence.
[Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind.]
By philosophy, most people primarily mean coming up with an ideology that feels good (or at least bearable). A few people primarily mean the search for truth by philosophy, there it isnât presupposed that weâre here because life is good, even though we want it to be good.
Well, then committing suicide is apparently meaningful to them; and since theyâre still alive even while attempting suicide, living is apparently meaningful to them⌠(Itâs only when the attempt is successful that oneâs life can be said to be meaningless to oneself in this senseâand only because one is then lifeless!)
Sure, but what does this (objectively) meaningless survival instinct imply? That life is meaningful.
Indeed:
I think there most probably is no objective meaning, but Iâm still subject to all kinds of (implied) subjective meanings.
Guys try itâŚgame Shooting Flying demon!!! â Shikhondo Blue Pieta
Apparently? No, thatâs just begging the question. To some who commit suicide, suicide could be meaningful, to others it could be meaningless.
Whether we do or donât do something, you assume there is meaning behind it. This way you have everything covered.
It doesnât imply that at all.
With that wrong assumption you just sabotage yourself early on in the quest of answering the âWhy are we here?â question. (I donât mind that, just pointing it out.)
No, I donât⌠By âapparentlyâ, I mean implicitly. When someone commits suicide, then that implies that that is meaningful to them.
How would you imagine the latter? The person doesnât experience it at all as meaningful, but does it anyway, perhaps because they flipped a coin to the question âto be, or not to beâ? But then they apparently attach meaning to the coin flip, donât they? Otherwise, why wouldnât they do another coin flip to determine whether they should attach meaning to the first flip? âOh, waitâŚâ
I would agree that something can be meaningful to someone on one level and meaningless on another. Note though that weâre not talking about philosophical zombies here.
Yes and Iâm saying thatâs begging the question. We have to draw the line somewhere. If meaning is sometimes assigned by living beings on some level, then living beings can also not assign meaning sometimes.
So then it looks like that despite what you claim, you somehow have to hold that meaning is objectively, inherently there anyway all the time, it isnât subjectively assigned.
Well, âsubjectively assignedâ sounds much too active to me, anyway. Do you ever think, like, alright, Iâm gonna assign some meaning here! Take that, you thing or situation or whatever! Now you have meaning!
Or maybe thatâs just the non-native English speaking.
Well, like I said, they can experience things as meaningful on one level and as meaningless on another. But you seem to say they can experience things as meaningless on every level. I donât think they can experience it at all then, unless they first think it may be meaningful but then decide it isnât and subsequently ignore it or something. And even then this would be an example of the âneutralâ meaning I mentioned earlier, including the quote marks.
Well, I do think itâs an objective fact that subjective valuesâincluding âmeaning(ful)ââexist, yes. In fact, I know for a fact that at least one subject exists (not necessarily grammar-metaphysically, e.g. Cartesianly, but still) that experiences things on at least some level as meaningful: yours truly. To be sure, though:
âNietzsche pointed out that âtruthâ and âknowledgeâ, i.e., âscienceâ itself , are among the unjustified and unjustifiable âvaluesâ.â (Zuckert and Zuckert, Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy, pages 26-27.)
Words/symbols are representations of abstractions referring to energy patterns.
Or do you find this difficult to comprehend, Half Hebe?
Hereâs the differenceâŚ
HorseâŚa word
UnicornâŚanother word.
Whatâs the difference?
Whatâs the difference between using âvalueâ to refer to a processâŚan easily falsifiable processâŚand using it as an ontologyâŚpulling it out of your anus, to exploit imbeciles?
