Cosmic meaning?

[iambiguous]

The Question of the Meaning of Life: Answerable or Unanswerable?
Jeffrey Gordon wonders what it would mean to have meaning.

“We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer… The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the meaning of life became clear to them have been unable to say what constituted that meaning?)” Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

On the other hand, once again, this basically revolves [for me] around meaning which can be communicated such that everyone readily understands it.

For example, what does it mean to submit posts here? Not the content of the post but the act of submitting it itself. Are we going to engage in heated arguments about it? Not likely unless you are afflicted with one or another “condition” thwarting your capacity to think rationally even in regard to the either/or world.

For all its apparent importance, the question of the meaning of life is most strange. For the vast majority of people outside academe, it is the defining concern of philosophy, the issue that provides philosophy’s raison d’etre.

Actually, for the vast majority of people, meaning revolves around raising a family or going to school or going to work and getting the bills paid. Or simply doing all of the things that must be done if you are to subsist [or even thrive] from day to day.

Academic philosophers should hesitate before dismissing this view with a smile of polite embarrassment, for there is surely a broad but defensible sense of the question in which all philosophy is, indeed, about nothing else.

Okay, what then has the philosophical community [academic or otherwise] concluded in regard to meaning and morality? For example, socially, politically and economically, are we or are we not demonstrably responsible for what we say and do?

The defensible sense is the conception of philosophy as an attempt to understand the human condition and our place in the universe – the attempt, in short, to answer the three questions that Kant believed to comprise all philosophy: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?

Just out of curiosity, how might Kant have reacted to 1] The Gap, 2] Rummy’s Rule and/or 3] the Benjamin Button Syndrome? Instead, he falls back on God as the transcending font connecting everything to everything else.

But the fact is, this putatively definitive philosophical problem had rarely been addressed explicitly by any thinker before the nineteenth century, when Nietzsche and Kierkegaard made it their preoccupation. And although it would seem foolhardy or perverse to deny the importance of the question, exactly what is being asked and what might constitute a compelling answer have been notoriously elusive of clarification. In addition, the problem of the meaning of life seems to generate a multitude of paradoxes.

Here, it seems, we have the two paths taken by the existentialists to assess meaning [and morality]…God and No God. Kierkegaard takes a “leap of faith” to the Christian God while Nietzsche buried Him. But then the part where some say Nietzsche blinked and “thought up” the closest thing to God and religion…the Ubermensch and Eternal Recurrence.

[iambiguous]

The Question of the Meaning of Life: Answerable or Unanswerable?
Jeffrey Gordon wonders what it would mean to have meaning.

In Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s poignant metaphor of spiritual crisis, Gogo asks Didi what will happen to them when Godot at last arrives. It soon becomes clear that neither has any idea, that the sole focus of their relentless hope is shrouded in utter obscurity.

Some see godot here as God. In other words, the human condition is not essentially meaningless and purposeless. We just have to wait patiently for a God, the God to reveal Himself and disclose “the meaning of it all”. Others see godot as any explanation at all regarding The Meaning of Life. While others still see godot as the Grim Reaper…death: https://youtu.be/6W9PuLcoZMM?si=j1P58P0oOFcsSSW5

Are we not precisely in their condition whenever we wonder how our lives will be changed once the meaning of life is revealed?

More to the point [mine] what on Earth is to be done about it?

Actually, take your pick. In other words, there are hundreds and hundreds of sure-fire antidotes “out there”. And all one needs to do then is to believe that the One True Path they are on really, really is the One True Path to, well, whatever one needs it to be, right?

The above quotation from Wittgenstein alerts us to a similar paradox. Having felt perhaps for years that his life is deprived of meaning, a person now feels the meaning restored. But when we inquire of him just what this newfound meaning is, he’s inevitably unable to say.

On the other hand, if the restoration allows someone to sustain a comforting and consoling frame of mind all the way to the grave, what difference does it make if what is believed is in fact actually false?

Here is a kind of knowledge or wisdom we are inclined to regard as of the utmost importance, and yet we may well be at a loss to say what difference it will make to our lives once we acquire it, and we will be unable to express the knowledge when we possess it. What other enduring philosophical problem is so scuttled in paradox and confusion?

And then we only have to go back to the existence of existence itself and “somehow” fit the human condition into it.

[iambiguous]

The Question of the Meaning of Life: Answerable or Unanswerable?
Jeffrey Gordon wonders what it would mean to have meaning

Does human life have a meaning? If so, what is that meaning? How should I change my life to comport myself toward it?

Of course, the fanatics on their very own “my way or the highway” One True Path, will scoff at questions of that sort. The rest being, among other things, history.

Right?

My purpose in this article will be to understand what these sentences mean. First, I will set out the difficulties we encounter in dealing with ‘the problem of life’. Then I will try to uncover the experiential source of these problems, in order to account for the difficulties in resolving them and in order to clarify their sense.

As though this will upend any of those “meaning objectivists” who declare [here and elsewhere] that they already embody the most rational and virtuous manner in which to understand the human condition. Many will then come at you with things like, “that’s simple”. Or, for some, “or else”. After all, do we not live in a world where some speak of a problem in life that others actually embrace as a solution.

No, instead, the main danger here lies in encountering those who do insist the meaning of life encompasses their own assessment of legal prescriptions and proscriptions, of, politically, the appropriate rewards and punishments. In other words, given their capacity to enforce their own dogmas.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

An d here’s Mary…
Nothing registers.
She continues on.

Her collectivist objectivist is guiding her insanity.

[MrAuthoritarian]

The cosmos is divine simply because we have the gift of life, being, and existence because the absence of life is something we don’t want to conceive. So, we call this divine, God, miraculous, and so on. We worship, revere, and praise life or existence with these words that mean different things to different people.

But of course everything is impermanence for just as surely we live and breathe so we must also eventually die, the cosmos at some point in the far distant future long after our bones from our remains turn into dust will also die eventually as well.

[iambiguous]

The Question of the Meaning of Life: Answerable or Unanswerable?
Jeffrey Gordon wonders what it would mean to have meaning.

Difficulties of the Question

“Does human life have a meaning?” It seems reasonable to assume that a meaningful question points in the direction of a promising line of inquiry. But it is far from clear what promising line of inquiry this question can initiate.

Actually, what seems quite clear to some of us is this…that there are lots and lots of people who not only believe that human existence does have a meaning, but that they have in fact already found it. And trust me: they will invariably insist that it is unequivocally their own meaning and not yours.

It may be suggested that what I want to know in raising the question of life is whether there is some larger scheme of which human life is an essential part.

In other words, God or No God, is there an essential meaning such that one way or another it encompasses all of us? Yes, I think there might be. But what are the odds that it’s yours? Still, those of my ilk are certainly willing to explore the arguments of those who believe that their own One True Path does embody it.

All I ask is that they bring their technical arguments down out of the theoretical clouds and note how, given their own interactions with others pertaining to conflicting goods, they are able to demonstrate why their own value judgments reflect the optimal meaning and morality.

This may be called the religious conception of the question, since arguably one of the greatest psychological assets of the theistic tradition is to provide exactly this grand schema, with the apparent intention of assuring us that our lives do indeed have meaning.

From my frame of mind, nothing even comes close to religion in regard to this. With most religions, you not only get moral commandments, but in following them religiously you acquire immortality and salvation. Can any of the secular objectivists say this?

Indeed, thinkers as philosophically far-flung as Kierkegaard, Tolstoy and William James have understood the quest for meaning in just this way. In this understanding of the problem of life, the question prompts exploration of a possible divine plan or some rational order immanent in the universe such as Hegel proposed, and the role of human life in that plan or order.

Some, of course, are able to convince themselves to take this “existential leap” to a God, the God. And, yeah, I wish that I was one of them. But, here and now, I’m not.

[iambiguous]

The Question of the Meaning of Life: Answerable or Unanswerable?
Jeffrey Gordon wonders what it would mean to have meaning.

But the fact that one may be content to stop the [infinite] regress at a certain point does nothing to undermine its destructive logical force.

And if you never reach that point? In regard to meaning and morality. And one person’s “destructive logical force” may well be anything but that for others.

That a great many people have found deep consolation in the idea of an afterlife cannot be denied. That these same people were satisfied to stop their search for meaning there is also undeniable. But the question of the meaningfulness of the afterlife remains despite the fact that they are content not to raise it.

That’s basically the modus operandi of any number of meaning/morality/metaphysical objectivists here. If being content – comforted and consoled – becomes the whole point of believing what you do, why rock the boat by, say, coming to places like this and dealing with “fractured and fragmented” philosophers like me? And who can deny that when it comes to value judgments of this sort merely believing what you do need be as far as it goes.

Perhaps it is not meaning they seek, but a kind of emotional fulfillment – the sense that the world is hospitable, or the assurance that they are loved. But the fact that they end their quest with the afterlife does not get us any closer to understanding what would make the afterlife meaningful.

That’s my point as well regarding the particularly “arrogant, autocratic, authoritarian” sectarians among us. The afterlife becomes whatever they think and feel and intuit that it is. The details become moot once they believe they can acquire immortality and salvation simply by believing in one or another God or spiritual path. Given one or another rendition [for some] of “or else”.

As we observe the characters in Waiting for Godot it occurs to us that the failure of Godot to appear might well be a blessing to them, for were Godot at last to come, they would be forced to confront the question of precisely in what sense they are saved. If we can establish meaningfulness only by being part of a larger framework, then once presented with any such scheme, we have no logical recourse but to embark on a search without end.

Here, in my view, it comes down to whether you construe godot as a waiting for meaning and purpose in life on this side of the grave, or as a waiting for God, or [as I think] as a waiting for death itself.

[abc1231 (Jupiter123)]

When it comes to religion.

Atheists and Theists are 100% in agreement that humankind is 100% responsible for all atrocities that have happened or will happen throughout history.

Atheists and Theists are also 100% in agreement that if a devil God exists then he is 100% responsible.

[Demon]

First and foremost, one must understand what meaning is. Meaning is a two-way connection between the object of thought and the thinking of the Universe (the entirety of all thinking). This is why there are two types of meaning:

• Objective meaning (specific)
• Subjective meaning (general)

In fact, there are always at least two meanings.

---

Life is a conditional period of change , beyond which changes are not accounted for by understanding. The meaning of human life lies in the gathering and formation of spirit.

• Gathering happens through learning and knowledge .
• Formation happens through right : for example, the right to power or the right to teach .

Spirit is the force that defines essence, bestowing the right to be, to exist.

In other words, do you have the spirit to grasp definitions and begin using them?

And by the way, spirit is a phantom of reason .

[abc1231 (Jupiter123)]

You haven’t got a clue what you are talking about.It’s made up word salad.

[Demon]

From the perspective of, say, a parrot in a cage, everything beyond the cage is garbage. Are there any constructive objections? I’m ready to listen. By the way, this is exactly what differentiates a rational person from a parrot. The latter only makes judgments with its chirping.

[meno41 (William gundry)]

Maybe like quantum leap

[Demon]

“Quantum leap”?
Sounds grand. Almost like “a new era” or “a higher state of consciousness.”
In reality — an electron twitches, and everyone calls it a revolution.

Nowhere to leap, really. The energy levels are few, and most are already occupied.
No intermediate states. You jump — great. You don’t — stay put and don’t sparkle.

And yet this is how “personal growth” is described in trendy blogs.
— “I’ve made a quantum leap — I stopped eating gluten!”
Well, congratulations — you’re clearly on a new orbital now.

So yes: a quantum is a portion.
And the “leap” is just the same old attempt to sell a flicker as a sunrise.

[meno41 (William gundry)]

Philosophy is not all sensible, it does have intuitive basis historically validated. That the world shudders angst, is a metaphor, extending from reversible meaning, structures that view both the effects and affects of technology, as one madman wishing to extend the achievements of technology to less then peaceful uses. And understatement serves public sentiment far better then the other way around.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

…hyperthetically, of course.

[Demon]

@meno41

Philosophy is not all sensible, it does have intuitive basis historically validated. That the world shudders angst, is a metaphor, extending from reversible meaning, structures that view both the effects and affects of technology, as one madman wishing to extend the achievements of technology to less then peaceful uses. And understatement serves public sentiment far better then the other way around.

Philosophy is the discipline that defines the direction of development for all other sciences. I’m curious — what exactly have you imagined ‘philosophy’ to be?

[meno41 (William gundry)]

More toward a reverse metaphor of metaphysics as it was intended, the reversal become a safety valve against the tyranny of the senses over the sensible.

[iambiguous]

The Question of the Meaning of Life: Answerable or Unanswerable?
Jeffrey Gordon wonders what it would mean to have meaning.

If a larger schema does not logically end our quest, perhaps then, in asking the question of life, we are searching for the internal order of the whole, as we might do in trying to determine the meaning of a play, to borrow a thoughtful analogy from John Wisdom in The Meaning of Life, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ might, then, really mean, ‘What is the order in the drama of time?’ Is life a tragedy, or is it a comedy, or is it the sort of tragicomedy depicted in the works of Kafka and Beckett?

So, is anyone here convinced that philosophers will someday be able to encompass the meaning of life such that “somehow” meaning in the is/ought world will be deemed as objective as meaning in the either/or world?

I’m not saying that it won’t happen. Let alone that it can’t happen. And, of course, any number of truly hardcore moral objectivists among us will scoff at this uncertainty. After all, they have already connected the dots between meaning and morality such that there is no difference. At least not up in the philosophical clouds.

However there are also serious problems with this new candidate for the direction of our inquiry. Unlike this question of the meaning of the play, this question about life seems to be a request for a kind of knowledge. But what would it mean to know that human life is a comedy or a tragedy, or a random mixture of elements of both? And how would such knowledge be confirmed?

On the other hand, we still live in a world where many make little or no distinction between what they claim to know is true and what actually is true. In fact, some seem more intent on going after those who claim to know something else entirely.

As for whether the human condition is a comedy or a tragedy or a combination of both, that isn’t the right question from my frame of mind. Instead, the more relevant question would seem to revolve around why some call particular experiences tragic while others see them as anything but. And those who laugh at things that others are devastated regarding.

[Kallikantzaros (Silenus)]

Same shit…Mary is stuck in a linguistic loop of her own making.
She chooses the definitions to subvert…

Meaning is not purpose.

Meaning is how phenomena inter-relate, interact…the cosmos is full of meaning.

Purpose is another matter.
Existence has no purpose…no telos.
Life’s purpsoe is the perpetuation of life…but this does not satisfy humans.
Humans need another purpose, another objective…something more meaningful.

They need an objective to give their suffering meaning…to justify their pains.
But existence has no purpsoe…so man must give himself purpose.
Every ideal has its own objective…its own purpose.
Therefore, conflicting purposes create conflicting value-judgments.

But not all objectives are equal.
Some are unrealizable.
Each objective requires a particular kind of man, so every ideology has its own objective, its own purpose…and creates its own ideal man.
And what determines which is advantageous and which is not?
Natural order and chaos - the cosmos and its constant interactivity creating matrices of meaning.

Relative to these matrices of meaning man’s ideology must prove itself.
For example…communism fails repeatedly, because its objectives, its purpose, is contrary to cosmic order…so it must find excuses for its failures, constantly adjusting its methods to finally realize its collectivist objective.

[abc1231 (Jupiter123)]

There is no meaning in existence and non existence because existence/non existence is binary.

There is no life in existence/non existence.

A lifeless binary processing biological machine computes that it exists and doesn’t exist.It exists because it needs to exist to claim that it doesn’t exist and it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t possess life…(I think,therefore I am) or (I compute that I exist and I don’t exist because I am a lifeless binary processing biological machine which doesn’t possess life).

Only God can grant life to this binary processing biological machine.

The “I am” is separate from this lifeless binary processing biological machine.