Er
The fact that there’s no purpose to life.
Note 1 - Human’s, of course, as pattern finding animals are apt to project purposes onto their lives and, indeed, life in general.
Note 2 - Evolution has no teleology, no conscious purpose - but it might be said to unconsciously explore certain spaces (and indeed via body architecture, limitations on surviving mutations, selection etc) and it probably has some very long term directions but these are not conscious ones.
kp
Well, since you believe in evolution as the inspiration for life, does any human ever have any purpose for anything they do? If so, from where did that purpose come?
Your theory, I’m guessing, is that evolution causes things and therefore if there is purpose anywhere, evolution must have caused it. Okay, to me it is a matter of perspective, but in your paradigm, from where did purpose come?
This is very relevant because you have proclaimed that there is no purpose, yet even you cannot deny that you say things with purpose as do many others. I am not arguing if evolution was the cause. I am asking how you explain “no purpose” and also, “I speak with purpose” at the same time.
As i say evolution has no conscious purpose or inspiration.
Human mind is based on complex, collective organization of a huge number of neuron’s which amongst other things construct an singular identity which reinforces that sense of self by continuing the story. ( seeHodstadder “i am a strange loop”) It is emergent and independent at the level of “I” - how exactly this works (especially how an independent consciousness emerges from a purely law bound system) is pretty much an unanswered question in science and philosophy for me.
Evolution has only one purpose (survival) we seem to be able to generate an infinite number - the jump as I say is very difficult to account for.
Like I say I can’t explain it - but everything I see convinces me that there is no purpose in life besides survival but that humans (and possibly some animals dogs to dolphins to a lesser extent then us) are capable of endowing or projecting purpose onto it. This purpose is not inherent.
I think we developed to this level evolutionarily but I can’t account for our free will/independence - despite our minds being clearly based on predictable law based sub systems…
kp
We have invented purpose. Otherwise you have no way of experiencing the purpose of anything - the purpose of the one that’s responding or even your own physical body. You have no way of experiencing that at all except through the help of the knowledge that has been put in you. So, there may not be any such thing as purpose at all, let alone the ultimate purpose
We are not creating. The brain is only a computer. Through trial and error you create something. But there are no thoughts there. There is no thinker there. Where are the thoughts? Have you ever tried to find out? What there is is only about thought but not thought. You cannot separate yourself from a thought and look at it. What you have there is only a thought about that thought, but you do not see the thought itself. You are using those thoughts to achieve certain results, to attain certain things, to become something, to be somebody other than what you actually are. Take the example of a word-finder. You want to know the meaning of a word and press a button. The word-finder says, “Searching.” It is thinking about it. If there is any information put in there, it comes out with it. That is exactly the way you are thinking. You ask questions and if there are any answers there, they come out. If the answers are not there, the brain says “Sorry.” It is no different from a computer.
If there is a purpose it’s already in operation there.
JSS,
I am amused at your criticisms of UPF’s ideas which you give with an agenda (socialist BS as an interpretation of holism) and no attempt to understand what he is saying. We evolve! And our evolving involves a mix and match of certainty and uncertainty and of chaos and order.
Purpose of life? Teleology? I thought philosophy did that in. The purpose of life is to live it.
“Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”-- John Lennon.
Well “survival” is all I am talking about, “That which remains in harmony CANNOT perish”. That is what makes harmony “The Purpose”, because it is what prevents destruction or provides survival. Maximum momentum of harmony provides maximum survivability. That is why you attempt to grow and procreate.
All of your other purposes were derived due to the instinctive effort of survival (through personal harmony) due to evolution encountering your current experiences.
{{–Or you can just say, “God did it”, either way–}}
I have not criticized his ideas. He expresses attitude while presuming and misinterpreting what I write. I offered some definitions, but I don’t expect much change.
Agreed
The survival of a cell depends upon the survival of the cell next to it. And your survival and my survival depend upon the survival of our neighbor
And THAT is what the entire world needs to know, but doesn’t currently believe because they have been raised thinking in terms of “us and them”, “we and the enemy”.
They have been taught that “Peace” is that foolish purpose of others. In reality, Harmony is everyone’s purpose from the moment of the conception whether they like it or not.
There’s much of harmony in life but also plenty of wastage - mutations that don’t survice (most are harmful) evolutionary dead ends, fish roe slaughtered as plankton etc…
Unless you see some sort of huge underlying harmony underlying it some how
yupe!
Agreed again - though my difficulty is how do we get from chemical reactions up to things like purposes, free will (wars, cocktail paties etc!)
Is a feeling of consciouness/free choice merely the gap where we wait for the nuerons to decide for us?
I dunno
To me figuring this out could be truly philosophical question/task.
Yea undoubtedly some truth to this!
No doubt of the mjor role of altruism and coperation in long term kin and species survival
(unacknowledged by the very crude “nature red in tooth and claw” version of Darwin (I know he used that phrase but evolution is not simply a continous battle between in-duh-vid-duals))
I’d say we are a mix of social and anti social.
Weirdly the “modern” “private” man is anti social is mostly due to our post biological/human/societal evolution rather than our biological one which is clearly that of a social animal!
kp
come off it
Science and logic can only describe events - they have nothing to say about the purpose of life
interesting - that does clarify the OP somewhat - but my basic qualms remain - you are setting up a moral platform (whether you intended to or not) by positing what seems an arbitrary answer to the question of the meaning of life. Life is most likely meaningless, except for whatever arbitrary meaning we assign to it - and such assignations are made on the basis of personal preference. They are unprovable, thoroughly subjective interpretations - and that is true even if you disagree with me that life is ultimately meaningless. As such, they are not in themselves facts about the universe - not in the relativistic sense that i understand facts, and even less so in the absolutist sense in which you understand them. You are basically masking a theological argument as a naturalistic one - and i am reflexively suspicious of such an enterprise, which is why i persist in responding to you even though you find me so annoying.
not all living things have agency - unless you’re advocating some kind of panpsychism?
dude, don’t be a snot
I am not talking about the idea that the world is a big bowl of flowers, honey, and bird song.
I am saying that every single living thing, the DNA/RNA process itself, is a strategy of attempting (not succeeding so much but attempting) to establish a compatible harmony around and within itself. Every action taken by ever living thing is derived through the fundamental strategy of seeking self-harmony.
Once a body and brain is formed that can strategize on a conscious level (aware of surroundings), it is caught between the need to acquire and consume and the need to establish compatible/harmonious surroundings. It requires what think of as a high degree of intellect to fully comprehend how to balance that dilemma. animals come closer to a balance of harmony between them than humans, but as long as there are predators, obviously there is conflict (the lack of harmony).
Predators are formed as one of the evolutionary options to achieve acquisition for sake of an individual struggle for its own harmony (selfishness). Predation, although seeking harmony for itself, is short sighted as to what effect it creates. Predation creates enemies. But note that even a propagated predator species very rarely hunts its own kind. Procreation seeks to cause all other life to be only of its own compatible type. Compatibility/harmony is the strategy being attempted with cell division, replication, reproduction, and procreation. The shell of “like kind” provides a safety surrounding and thus aids in survival and continuation of the DNA/RNA’s harmony.
We did not even know purpose existed until we were mature enough to ask the question. We did not invent it. It invented us.
The attempt by the DNA/RNA to survive (maintain and protect its harmony) is what caused you to exist. Its intent/purpose is what created you and every attempt you make, including your attempt to deduce purpose.
Making a moral issue out of what is, is your issue, not mine. I am talking about what is actually there whether we like it or not; what actually has been functioning for eons before we ever thought to question it; sweet and rosy or fcked to the gills. It is what it is. Your DNA/RNA effort created you and every choice you make once it encounters experience. Every decision you make has some deciding intent, else it cannot be purposefully made.
I am pointing out that before you were old enough to even think about the issue or get programmed by your school teachers and television set, decisions were already being made by your body and brain. The direction they were aiming, successfully or or not, was in the direction of self-harmony.
DUDE, look at the huge difference between the way YOU respond and how everyone else is responding. You get in accord with what you give, dude. You are acting like a 15 year old kid with a dill up his ass and a row up his nose. Lay off the 'tude. It isn’t producing advantage (buying the bread).
I can see that I should have called it, [size=150]“SELF-HARMONY”[/size] just to make it more obvious.
Social harmony is a rational decision in order to accomplish self-harmony.
Thx guys. (edited the OP) 
I think that’s a key clarification JSS. It does, though, harken back to the issue of melody/cacophony. If one were truly harmonized with oneself, wouldn’t one rather be pure melody? And unless one already in fact does have an “inner melody” (self-song (music sphere?)), how is it one might harmonize, or with what? How strictly is it a “self” harmony? Lacking revelation of what such melody in fact is, and even having perfect pitch, does one not need intrusions – nay, extrusions – of discord, in order to re-set the chord one was mistakenly in? Nevermind the key! 
( 
)
Ah durn
Seriously though dude does that not commit you to referring to a spiritual world or some sort of an unknown neuaman?
OK I see your point every living thing attempts to build a little world of harmony BUT its strictly limited to its immediate components NOT to the world at large. PLUS the ultimate result, if you believe the thermodynamics crew is increased entropy.
A cell with its genetic component being a perfect example.
Its a little capsule of bio chemical organization in a universe governed by a gradual increase in entropy
(aka randomness aka disharmony – unless harmony be a collection of random movement of luke warm molecules – the famed heat death that thermodynamics has us pointed to all other things being equal…)
In keeping together its “information” its membrane, organelles, genome etc it creates more entropy – more chaos – so internal package of harmony gained at the expense of increase in entropy overall…
OK i think I can buy that – I mean strategies of cooperation have only recently being getting the attention they deserve.
Some sort of ultimate ecological awareness of the world though seems a uniquely human thing (maybe whales too but a long shot – I throw it in for star trek 4 fans!)
True – also they very often (usually?)work collectively in packs – lions or killer whale being a good example - the lone wolf is mostly a Hollywood creation.
Yes but at the expense of increasing dis harmony at a wider / “world” level.
I’d tend to also think we invent purpose – it may be a useful way of looking at things though to see nature as personified or having goals and aims but I don’t think it something that flows organically into us – I think its a human creation and I believe that there is some sort of leap out of purely deterministic process in our minds and that of higher mammals.
kp
How do you get more chaos/entropy out of cells maintaining and growing their order/harmony?
That’s easy enough
(the much more difficult question is how did this very unlikely highly organized thing called life ever arrise in a universe governed by thermodynamics)
Its years since I did biochemistry but here it is very roughly!
All living systems depend on taking in energy - basically from the sun in the first instance and then via predation into non photosynthesising animals.
Biological systems “defy” the second law of thermodynamics
(which says that in every transaction involving energy exchange a certain small amount is lost as heat/random motion of molecules/entopy and that if things are left to there own devices without any energy inputs they tend in this direction)
They do this by inputing the energy harvested to create structures like membrane bound cells:
“The formation and maintenance of living systems at energy levels well removed from equilibrium requires continuous work to be done on the system, even as maintenance of hot water in a water heater requires that continuous work be done on the system. Securing this continuous work requires energy and/or mass flow through the system, apart from which the system will return to an equilibrium condition (lowest Gibbs free energy, see equations 7-7 and 7-8) with the decomposition of complex molecules into simple ones, just as the hot water in our water heater returns to room temperature once the gas is shut off.”
(see ref below!)
But there’s a cost in terms of energy being transmitted back out of the cell as heat - if you’ve ever seen yeast or held a flask of bacteria growing rapidly you’ll have felt it.
The price to pay for concentrated local organization in the cell is a large increase in energy wasted in these processes as heat.
So overall biological organisms are contributed to accelerating the heat death of the universe (its ultimate "equibrium or harmony?)
The information dense structured nature of cells etc - means that they are essentially non - equilibrium (thermo dynamically) structures - but the price to pay is an increase in energy lost as heat (randomness) into the surrounding world
(Obviously we humans accelerate this even further in quite a conscious and purposive way (From Japanese bribes to international whale conferences all the way to Green house effect, land fill, erosion etc etc etc)
Found a nice introductory article here (quite understandable apart from the equations!)
ldolphin.org/mystery/chapt7.html
kp
That one is easy too actually.
Oh, okay. You were referring to the universe’s state of entropy, not the local system of the living cell.
Black-holes get around that problem and create order from disorder, reducing universal entropy. Life cannot exist in the universe without black-holes. It, nor anything else, could have ever formed in the first place.
Black-holes are the vacuum cleaners for stray energy and are the anti-Second-law-of-thermodynamics. They achieve that miracle through extreme harmony of their internal EM wave. In effect, they are merely an extremely huge neutron. Harmony that is pure enough counters heat loss and entropy.
The Second Law of thermodynamics was never a real law to begin with. Maxwell disproved it as a law some 130 years ago. Since then Science has merely been trying to save face by rewording it and it is now stated as a “tendency”. To me that is like saying that it is a law of physics that males are more logical than females.
OK dude i honestly have never heard that theory about black holes before - me and science parted company in the 1980s so you may well have a point
I would like to see some references though!
Best I can offer is wiki not really a great source…
Certainly it looks like black holes have very weird thermodynamics:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_thermodynamics
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole … on_paradox
They certainly seem to reckon that this potental information loss may be solvable and that some to all information isn’t lost!
[i]"Hawking was convinced, however, because of the simple elegance of the resulting equation which “unified” thermodynamics, relativity, gravity, and Hawking’s own work on the Big Bang. This annoyed many physicists, notably John Preskill, who in 1997 bet Hawking and Kip Thorne that information was not lost in black holes.
There are various ideas about how the paradox is solved. Since the 1997 proposal of the AdS/CFT correspondence, the predominant belief among physicists is that information is preserved and that Hawking radiation is not precisely thermal but receives quantum corrections. Other possibilities include the information being contained in a Planckian remnant left over at the end of Hawking radiation or a modification of the laws of quantum mechanics to allow for non-unitary time evolution.
In July 2005, Stephen Hawking published a paper and announced a theory that quantum perturbations of the event horizon could allow information to escape from a black hole, which would resolve the information paradox. His argument assumes the unitarity of the AdS/CFT correspondence which implies that an AdS black hole that is dual to a thermal conformal field theory, is unitary. When announcing his result, Hawking also conceded the 1997 bet, paying Preskill with a baseball encyclopedia “from which information can be retrieved at will”. However, Thorne remains unconvinced of Hawking’s proof and declined to contribute to the award."[/i]
Apparently the second law isn’t a law or a tendency or a “postulate”
“As mentioned above, in statistical mechanics, the Second Law is not a postulate, rather it is a consequence of the fundamental postulate, also known as the equal prior probability postulate”
However they offer plenty of proofs for it.
Personally I’d cite empirical evidence despite hundreds of efforts no one has ever created a perpetual motion machine - there always seems to be heat loss!
[i]"if the heat particle was conserved, and as such not changed in the cycle of an engine, that it would be possible to send the heat particle cyclically through the working fluid of the engine and use it to push the piston and then return the particle, unchanged, to its original state. In this manner perpetual motion could be created and used as an unlimited energy source.
Thus, historically, people have always been attempting to create a perpetual motion machine, in violation of the second law, in the hope of solving the world’s energy limitations."[/i]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law … modynamics
A bit on prior probability here (some sort of statistical way of considering a priori - hey philosophers take note!)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability
Maybe a case for booting this onto the science forum - I’m at the limits of my small knowledge James!
kp