Greetings, men and women of our beloved forum! I endeavor to hold your attention for a few moments, and preferably receive a reply which will cure my curiosity on a matter of which I have been unsuccessfully contemplating an answer to for some time now. Onward!
The ambiguous question (which I will attempt to clarify) goes as follows: Does the existence of propagating life qualify that their must be a meaning to life?
Now for the elucidation. In our observations through science, we see that there exists an entity which expends energy to exist, and to propagate, to continue its species; we call this entity an organism - a form of life. The organism eats (receives energy), moves around and survives (expending energy), and continues the organism’s line of existence by procreating. However, there seems to be no point to the procreating, unless there exists a reason for it to do so. My analogy: If there exists a lion chasing you, there is a reason to run away. Conversely, if you had no reason to run away, then you won’t run! So why should an organism reproduce if it has no reason to? “It just does” certainly isn’t a very satisfactory answer. If I went out to the street and shot ten people, and someone screamed “Why are you doing this!?”, quite probably I would not answer “Can’t you just accept that I am shooting people?”. I do not see anyone gluing shoes all over their body and bunny hopping around New York city screaming “Flug, bloog, jip, cug, blam!”. Why? Because no one has a reason to (or so I would hope)! So if there is no meaning to life propagating, no point, no reason for it to, then we shouldn’t be here to discuss it - yet we are. Does this mean there is a meaning to life?
I hope I have clarified my original question a little bit, and dearly hope a few of you whom have taken the time to read my ramblings will grace me with an answer that might provoke further thinking, or, if possible, an answer to my question (though more often than not philosophical conversations tend to end up as miscommunications and arguments about one’s premise or a conflict of definitions between parties - which would be of no surprise to me if my question was submitted to such a fate). Thank you.
It seems this is true - organisms indeed wish to live. But why? Let us examine this premise to further detail.
It’s approximately four billion years ago, and you’re the first example of a single celled organism. You have no emotions to affect your judgment one way or another - quite possibly you have no consciousness what-so-ever (I’d prefer to delve as little as possible into the who’s conscious and who isn’t argument), and you propagate. Why should you have chosen this course of action? Why is continued existence, of survival, preferable to the absence of existence? As was given in my opening post, we see that a reaction occurs for a reason. If, for instance, someone were to slap you, your reaction would be to get angry - or to smile, should you be into that sort of thing. But either way, you gave a response because there was a reason. When life began, it chose to continue (procreate) - unless it had a reason to survive, why did it?
We see at a most fundamental level that my hypothesis is: (p) everything happens for a reason (q) life is procreating, thus (r) there is a reason life is procreating.
The only way I see this hypothesis as failing is if one assumes not everything happens for a reason - that things simply are. I will have a better defense against this argument after some sleep.
Well, you came from somewhere, right? Do you deny the existence of your great great grandparents? They must have existed before you. You didn’t just materialize from nowhere. And if you project this into the future, the same should apply to your great great grand children. This is how the theory of evolution works.
I agree. I don’t think there is a reason for life’s continuation, it is reason in itself. Someday, the earth will “die” and the universe will burn out and all the life is going to perish. If reason for life’s existence is survival and continuation (ad infinitum I suppose), then it is doomed from the getgo.
The problem is that you’re saying that propagation is preferable, but preferable to what? The single-cell organism seems to have no choice in the matter–it’s structure inherently propagates. Why is this?
It is, because the structure of the organism is to propagate. This make it a living thing, as opposed to a non-living thing. It’s a matter of categorization.
What is the reason behind the propagation? I don’t know… DNA? Do you want to get scientific or religious?
Excellent post and well written! Witty too
After having given this some thought a few years back, it was my conclusion that if there is a purpose to life, it is simply to perpetuate itself. Why does it? Because a) unconscious life has no choice other than to propagate b) conscious life is selfish, and by being selfish, it can only ensure its own survival. If we were to assume that this were not a reason to exist, and that there was some higher pursuit, I think it quite possible that the first few humans may have found themselves more concerned with, say, knowledge than reproduction/survival. That being true, we wouldn’t be able to have this discussion.
I then reasoned however, that life will inevitably die out, which will null the purpose of it once it does. Does that mean that life has no ultimate purpose because its ultimate purpose is in fact to simply stop being or does that null its purpose only when it does? This is where I thought I came to a dead end. Does the ultimate end null the process going into it? Assuming that, it would seem that, for example, eating a donut is pointless because it will inevitably finish. I found a way out.
Going through that method of thinking, I reasoned that the purpose of life IS to procreate, in itself. I have no reason to end my life, because I like to finish my donut before I assume that the donut will cease to exist whether I eat it or not. Selfishness then seems to be the motive for the purpose.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution going on here. Propogation and life is not preferable, it is simply what tends to remain from the assortment of things created and destroyed by the physical forces in the universe. Things that perpetually reproduce are more likely to continue existing(as a whole). If something happens to copy itself, that copy will continue copying itself and so on. As well, if something happens to act in ways that promote its ability to survive (and thereby prolong its chance to propogate) it is more likely to survive and propogate and so on to its copies. The process doesn’t have a purpose. It’s simply that that which is accidentally created and happens to be better at surviving simply survives, where as those that are not better do not.
And in my opinion, all is causation. Ultimately, the concept of purpose is simply how we generalize and compartmentalize tendencies. It all comes back to the physical forces of the universe, control and purpose is illusianary.
Of course modern evolutionism especially when it is added to some “humanist” framework adds a whole bunch of idealisms and metaphysical assumptions into life built upon baseless assumptions which then creates many absurdities taking all meaning away from the reality of survival.
“Whys” are built upon many assumptions. You assume there needs to be reason for everything much like how modern rationality assumes the cosmos is consistent or understandable.
“Whys” are the things that civilization is built on which consequently makes us even more delusional on the subject of purpose.
Because it just is. Reality “ought” to do nothing in explaing itself to you or me by our constant ramblings of the word, why.
Because it could. You expect and assume that everything needs to give a reason for itself in doing things.
The cosmos is unrational. If the cosmos does not have any reason or rationality in operating, it then doesn’t have any reason to do anything, yet it still does so without reason nonetheless.
Its not an assumption. Your the one who is assuming that all of existence including the cosmos is reasonable.
your lion analogy puts an interesting perspective on the “reason for action” issue.
when you try to compare that to the fact we exist (meaning someone must have procreated us) you hit a bump of objectivity vs subjectivity.
definitely there may be a logical reason for you to procreate, and it may be meaningful… to you.
reasons are highly subjective… meaning a good reason for a certain action for one person could be a reason for a different action to another person. it depends highly on the point of view or perspective.
this however does not mean that what we deem meaningful is [b]truly/b meaningful given that we know too little about our own existence to make such a claim.
The OP simply leads to one conclusion: absurdism–looking for meaning in a presumably indifferent universe. It’s a natural human tendency to search for answers, reasons; to wonder. It’s initially hard to reconcile your drive for personal meaning with the apparent triviality of existence.
