What do you live for?
More often than late I have found myself wondering "what I am even living for?". It seems after some many years of analysis of this question that all I can rationally say is that I live only because I am afraid to die, like any other animal on earth.
There are some fleeting moments of joy and beauty that I can capture but it is foolish to live FOR those moments exclusively because they are transitory and fleeting, nor do they actually give any more purpose to one's life, it just makes life more "exciting". They are merely moments in which one is so elated with pleasure that they do not think of how empty and absurd their situation as a human is. If one were to live for pleasure alone it would leave one waiting in anticipation all the time and actually make life worse!
Happiness is an extension of the human experience much like my right pinky toe is too. Claiming happiness is a purpose for life is absurd. You might here a great many people claim "The very sole purpose of my existence is to experience happiness" but this makes as much sense as to say "the very sole purpose of my existence is to experience my right pinky toe".
I am not talking about the meaning of life here but a purpose that sustains one from avoiding inevitable death.
Please note this is not a pessimistic viewpoint but a realistic one. I am not saying the glass is half empty but saying what does it matter at all?
There are some fleeting moments of joy and beauty that I can capture but it is foolish to live FOR those moments exclusively because they are transitory and fleeting, nor do they actually give any more purpose to one's life, it just makes life more "exciting". They are merely moments in which one is so elated with pleasure that they do not think of how empty and absurd their situation as a human is. If one were to live for pleasure alone it would leave one waiting in anticipation all the time and actually make life worse!
Happiness is an extension of the human experience much like my right pinky toe is too. Claiming happiness is a purpose for life is absurd. You might here a great many people claim "The very sole purpose of my existence is to experience happiness" but this makes as much sense as to say "the very sole purpose of my existence is to experience my right pinky toe".
I am not talking about the meaning of life here but a purpose that sustains one from avoiding inevitable death.
Please note this is not a pessimistic viewpoint but a realistic one. I am not saying the glass is half empty but saying what does it matter at all?
Comments (212)
After his talk, an audience member asked him how he coped with the stress and traumatic memories. He said that he felt he owed a debt to all the people that had helped him, many of whom had died. So I thought that was a good answer. So that may be a way to think about it - how to help others. It could help take your mind off the problem.
I find 'naked existence' too austere, too arid, too bleak to let it remain uncovered. I try to overlay the raw fact of my existence with purpose, or divine direction. "I am here to..." "God made me because..." and so on. I find an infinity of ways to amuse, distract, or overcome raw, purposeless existence during my short turn here.
It is, perhaps, extremely presumptuous to speak for everyone, but I think we are, in fact, all in the same boat. That's how I look at it. Some people, of course, don't -- but that's their problem, not mine.
Despair is by no means the inevitable, obvious, necessary, or certain result of recognizing that existence is nakedness in a cold, damp wind. We can seek existential shelter by dint of our imagination and ingenuity, which we almost invariably succeed in doing.
Existential shelter" is no guarantee that we will always be happy, cheerful, pleasant, content, etc. Such states can not be guaranteed. We do well to obtain enough happiness, cheer, pleasing, contentment, and if we don't, well, we endure until conditions improve. Sometimes people experience great love, joy and delight, even ecstasy. And soon enough existence will evaporate for us, one by one.
I see what your saying and have considered taking back my job as a carer but then I think "why am I helping them?" helping them for what? To achieve their purpose? Which is to help others to help others to help others. Seems a bit cyclic and pointless doesn't it?
I mean in a sense I am really asking why even live at all?
Bare, mean existence isn't going to shell out an answer for you. Your "imagination and ingenuity" are ready, at your service. So... make an answer to your question, 'why even live at all' and make it 'good'. The same imagination, intellect, ingenuity, persistence, and so on that led you to "Why even live at all" is capable of far more.
Are you speaking of pleasure?
How is imagination and ingenuity going to trully relinquish existential despair? Seems like just another fancy gadget of the brain to trick itself into not thinking about how empty and absurd this place is.
For instance a monkey is captive in a zoo and treated quite un-naturally until one day a worker at the zoo notices the monkey and it uses it's ingenuity and imagination and plays with the worker, the worker then offers him shelter and gives him pleasure. Fact is, the monkey is in the freakin zoo no matter what gadgets he has.
Not primarily. Though, getting out of a cold, raw wind is a real pleasure. No, more like love, warmth, good routines, giving, receiving, comfort, nurture... Being taken care of when you are sick isn't a "pleasure", it's a comfort. Getting rid of a bad headache isn't a pleasure, it's a relief. Giving kind attention to an unhappy child isn't a pleasure, it's nurture.
I think it needs not imagination, intellect, ingenuity, persistence to reach being fed up with the world, it just takes uncongenial conditions and repetition, then even the stupidest crack, in fact there normally the first to crack.
So you're saying that the reason to live should be to alleviate suffering in the world.
I agree partially but... Hypothetically, if all the suffering were to vanish tomorrow... what would be the purpose then?
The World is loaded with uncongenial conditions and repetitions of bad experiences that definitely lead us to being fed up at times. That's a given. I don't at all deny that.
I can't even imagine what such a purpose would be? Are you thinking something along the lines of the pharaohs and the slaves?
The problem is more one of what can purpose be? I just can't imagine what it would be apart from love, compassion, beauty, joy. Which to me, seem like neutral aspects of the human experience of which we can not claim to be a purpose for existence (as mentioned in the OP)
I meant not frustrated or having one's patience tested but rather a repetitive series of events that keep causing one to question what the purpose of doing anything actually is.
I mean I give my effort, and it is a struggle at times but why am I doing it again? Just to keep doing it?
[IMG]http://i67.tinypic.com/v6q5js.jpg[/IMG]
Trust me, suffering isn't going to vanish.
"alleviate suffering in the world" is a worthy purpose. There are additional worthy purposes. Creating joy. Giving and receiving love (which one is more difficult? That's a long discussion.) Growing roses (figuratively, if not literally). Learning. Creating new knowledge. Making art. Making the world a better place for yourself and others. Giving assistance. All sorts of things. It's a very long list.
So, if you were to decide to "make art" for instance, would that solve all your problems? Of course not.
Of course it won't vanish, that is why I said hypothetically.
I was trying to show you that if there was no suffering then there still wouldn't be a purpose. You are saying a worthy purpose is to "heal the world" but what will it be once the world is healed? To keep healing it more? And then what? Just to keep healing and healing and healing as long as humans exist?
That just doesn't seem logical. We are animals at base level. All animals share this in common.
"What is a man. If his chief good and market of his time. Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more." -Hamlet
"Believing is seeing." Not always true, but sometimes it is true. If we believe that there are dangerous weird things in the dark woods, when we go walking there at night, we will certainly see them. We have to calibrate our beliefs -- that's a piece of the ingenuity thing. Whenever you raise the question, "What's the point of doing this, anyway?" you can always come up with a negative answer. (Not you personally, people in general, I mean.)
If you believe there is no purpose in life, and that everything we do is ultimately (or even immediately) a stupid waste of time, then that is how you will see it. I'm not saying you do believe that. It's just that we have to be careful how we talk to ourselves.
The problem is that there is not an answer at all let alone a negative one.
I wish it were the scientology was right and Xeno has created farms on planets to reap soul juice. At least then I would know why I am here... jk
I agree, but I haven't concluded that yet. I am in despair over not being able to find any good reason at all. Only fools jump to conclusions without evidence like that (atheists, christians, etc.)
If we had healed the world, then we would have overcome sin (a Christian might say). In a world without sin we would be whole, and happy.
I agreed at the start that there wasn't any inherent purpose in existence. There is no inherent meaning in life. That alone is a fucking raw deal, but there is an up-side: An absence of purpose and meaning leaves you free to author your own purpose and meaning.
One expects answers from a meaningless universe?
But how does such a thing go?
It seems that whatever the mind can formulate as a purpose is just an illogical thought-trap as per our previous discussion.
Proof that it is meaningless? What is an answer if the universe has no meaning? Answer necessitates meaning.
Careful, careful: you are undermining your own capacity to create meaning. Your choice to call it an illogical thought-trap is dead end,
Which is why you aren't going to get one from the universe.
Well as of yet you haven't shown me how that can be true. I spelled out why love,compassion, joy etc. aren't viable products of purpose.
It is as irrational as to say that I am living for my right pinky toe.
haha, but the fact that answers EXIST in the universe already shows that the universe contains answers and therefore meaning.
So, make the most of your toe, then. Look, it's getting late, it's been a long day. It's time for me to brush my meaningless teeth and go to bed. I've enjoyed this discussion. You are OK. You are going to make it.
:D This isn't over...
I wish you a meaningless sleep
Indeed this seems to be a reasonable position, however it also seems to offer quite little in the way of prescriptive action. So we're left with a kind of dizzying uncertainty - do I walk my dog, do I ask that girl out, do I contemplate the nature of the divine, do I kill myself, do I watch the clock tick endlessly, do I study thermodynamics, do I vote for this guy or that guy, do I get a spray tan, do I make a smoothie, do I take a nap, do I read Hegel, do I do I do I do I do I ...
At some point in time your biological needs take over and you are forced into action, reluctancy be damned.
Do we live for something? Does the divine give us fulfillment? Can we revolt against the absurd? All of these thoughts seem inspiring, yet oddly distant or esoteric, as if it's always the other people who have it all figured out, and we're just playing catch-up. Don't agree with So-and-So? Then read Such-and-Such, fuck So-and-So, Such-and-Such has all the answers. And on it goes.
Obviously many will disagree with me when I say this, but I don't see very many good reasons to accept that even a single person "has it all figured out." Not the egotistical pop-scientists, not the religious nuts, not the academic philosophers (who have made neuroticism a discipline), not the stoner kid down the street, not the heroic explorer or patriot, not the spiritual gurus, not you, me, or anyone else here. Hell, God Almighty probably doesn't even know what the fuck is going on.
Now this doctrine of uncertainty is ironically a rather "certain" doctrine - indeed if taken literally it would lead to a contradiction: I am positively sure that nobody, including myself, knows anything substantial (a quite substantial claim!) But it seems to me that this belief in the uncertainty is more of a gut-reaction than a crisp theoretical position - yet surely gut-reactions have some credentials in cases like this.
So maybe, just maybe (notice the uncertainty?) a point of existence can be derived from a skeptical curiosity that the doctrine of uncertainty will be falsified in the future. Prove me wrong, Universe. Show me there is an overarching purpose. I'll stick around and eat some popcorn in the meantime, entertained by the whole absurdity and metaphysical uncertainty of it all.
And when I die, if there is no meaning to be found, I'll ask the Universe to guess what finger I'm holding up.
Because if you're not alive, this is the alternative. If you're alive, you have at least two choices, either to make the best of it, or to languish in one of various depressive states.
So you've got three choices;
Absolute none existence.
A depressive, or aimless opt out( while continuing to live).
Making the best of it.
Which do you prefer?
I basically go over what you are trying to get at in these threads. You may want to check them out and if you want to discuss any of the points, especially about the idea of instrumentality, feel free to make a comment.
http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/519/instrumentality/p1
http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/652/technology-and-science-and-our-lifes-purpose#Item_20
http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/642/the-nature-of-the-individuals-responsibility-to-the-group-or-society#Item_28
http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/657/relationships-are-they-really-a-source-for-meaningful-life-and-optimism#Item_56
http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/669/how-many-different-harms-can-you-name#Item_103
If you do not want to read all those thread, I'll copy and paste the first paragraph about instrumentality:
Here is the idea of instrumentality- the absurd feeling that can be experienced from apprehension of the constant need to put forth energy to pursue goals and actions in waking life. This feeling can make us question the whole human enterprise itself of maintaining mundane repetitive upkeep, maintaining institutions, and pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice. There is also a feeling of futility as, the linguistic- general processor brain cannot get out of its own circular loop of awareness of this. Another part of the feeling of futility is the idea that there is no ultimate completion from any goal or action. It is that idea that there is nothing truly fulfilling. Time moves forward and we must make more goals and actions.
So yeah I have come to a very similar conclusion. Essentially the ethic starts with antinatalism.. a questioning of why even bring new people into existence. Antinatalism not only solves the problem of future suffering, but it puts your own into perspective too. As the already-existing people experiencing existence, we must constantly be aware of the instrumentality of things. Do not flinch from it and move away to distraction. Rather, it is okay to bitch at the situation.. Be proud to be a Philosophical Pessimist.. Most people are going to tell you to be happy in the absurdity (Camus/Nietzschean style). This is an acceptance of the situation and take the good with the bad. I say it is okay to bitch at it. Philosophical Pessimism is a philosophy of consolation. There are innumerable amounts of harm, many quite nuanced and personalized for the individual. Instrumentality is the background harm out of all of them..it is the absurd angsty feeling.. It is the knowledge that we are going in day in and day out one day rolling into the next. It is the result of a self-aware animal contemplating its own situation. You will have wants and needs that will never be satisfied.. You will have contingent harms (as defined as circumstantial harms that are unwanted/unforeseen), and you will have to contend with the pendulum swing of your own willing nature which is survival through cultural upkeep on one hand (through all the various ways you keep yourself alive and well-adjusted in your cultural setting) and boredom on the other side which, if experienced for a measure of time, will lead to ideas of ennui (world-weariness) and instrumentality (things just do to do to do).. Inevitably, we must go from boredom to entertainment-seeking in our cultural settings.
The possibility that I'll find a better purpose than this one, which will probably be the self esteem that comes from achieving difficult things.
I live for the experience of being alive - the drama, the sadness and the happiness, because one cannot be without the other. Being alive is more interesting than being dead.
(And in case you don't know what a tiger gong is: tiger gong)
A woman from a Yanamamo-like tribe moved to NYC to taste the Big Apple. When reporters asked her first impressions in moving from the stone age to the modern jet age she said she had no idea that people could be so lonely all pressed together on the streets like cattle. She had grown up surrounded by the same thirty people seeing at most a handful of strangers a year without a radio, mailman, or even books and had never felt that lonely in her life.
Definitely that's something I dislike about New York/about big cities in general. In public, not only is everyone in their own little world, but they tend to react quite negatively if you in any way try to "break" that wall they put up.
It was odd for me simply moving from South Florida to New York City (I was born in the midwest, but raised in South Florida, where I lived everywhere from Miami to the "boonies" in western Palm Beach County). I can imagine that the differences would be that much more exaggerated for someone moving from a more traditional tribal existence to New York City.
Strawman if ever I saw one. I argued why happiness doesn't consist as a purpose for life. It had nothing to do whether one should or shouldn't be happy. You fool :P
Biological needs can force us into action but our purpose in life still be void. Just because I don't have purpose does not mean I am a motionless knitwit who gives every reason to procrastinate. It just means that slowly I will lose interest in EVERYTHING and start to either think about spiritual reclusiveness or suicide.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I think what you mean by "figured it out" is that they have found a purpose in life. IMO, I would think people can have a purpose in life and still not need to know wtf is going on, so isn't the topic of convo here about finding a purpose in life?
Quoting darthbarracuda
When you say stick around, you mean 100,000 generations? And also, how is that you are entertained by whole absurdity and metaphysical uncertainty? If anything it is cold and a little frightening
What the hell does that even mean?
How could I even guage or calculate with approximation if it would be more appealing if I have no idea what it is like?
That is like asking which pocket you want to choose from, in the right... would you like this plastic banana that is electrified at 250v? or in the left... would you like this something a rather with a superduper wizz bang thingamajig.
What does making the best of it entail? I clearly outlined in my OP
"Please note this is not a pessimistic viewpoint but a realistic one. I am not saying the glass is half empty but saying what does it matter at all?"
This about finding purpose, nothing to do with depression.
Thanks, I checked out all of them and found instrumentality to be the most pertinent here:
Instrumentality- the absurd feeling that can be experienced from apprehension of the constant need to put forth energy to pursue goals and actions in waking life. This feeling can make us question the whole human enterprise itself of maintaining mundane repetitive upkeep, maintaining institutions, and pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice.
I also found it interesting that you claimed the lofty goal of nonexistence or a transcendental existence through ascetic practices is only a coping mechanism for the situation but never truly resolves it.
Ok, but I still don't see all of that addressing the great one word question... Why?
You live for self-esteem? I can't imagine a more egotistical reason for a will to live, haha. I can already imagine you on your death bed with thousands of trophies and a big plump chest with pouty looks, exclaiming to everyone "You see how good I am? [i]You see?!?![/I]". Then you drop dead on the floor, bahaha.
Nice pic, but this has nothing to do with God. Furthermore it is the person in the tree who is being irrational. It was just stated that nothing they do matters and then he claims that "the future is an adventure". What is the point of an adventure if it has no point?
In other words, who wants to go to the north pole just to walk around aimlessly on an ice sheet? You go travelling on holiday to experience the different cultures, take in new sights,smells etc. all of which contribute tothe purpose of travelling.
Philosophizing about life's purpose on a bigger scale than that doesn't map down to those same categories unfortunately, and is more akin to walking around the north pole aimlessly.
Effectively your argument is "live life to experience it" but that really doesn't make sense. It is like saying cary 1000 buckets of water just because you can bro! It isn't self-validating and can not be.
What is the point of an adventure if it has no point?
In other words, who wants to go to the north pole just to walk around aimlessly on an ice sheet? You go travelling on holiday to experience the different cultures, take in new sights,smells etc. all of which contribute tothe purpose of travelling.
Philosophizing about life's purpose on a bigger scale than that doesn't map down to those same categories unfortunately, and is more akin to walking around the north pole aimlessly.
Effectively your argument is "live life to experience it" but that really doesn't make sense. It is like saying cary 1000 buckets of water just because you can bro! It isn't self-validating and can not be.
Quoting Harry Hindu
What the hell does that even mean?
How could you even guage or calculate with approximation if it would be more appealing if you have no idea what it is like to be dead?
That is like asking which pocket you want to choose from, in the right... would you like this plastic banana that is electrified at 250v? or in the left... would you like this something a rather with a superduper wizz bang thingamajig.
Yeah harry hindu, being alive is more interesting that being a something a rather with a superduper wizz bang thingamajig... makes total sense :-}
That just seems like a response ANY animal would make if they had the linguistic ability to do so.
Don't confuse your genetic predisposition for survival IN your thoughts for your personal preferences over what you find fashionable.
Why does virtue make to be or not to be not worth considering?
Why does wonder/wisdom make to be or not to be not worth considering?
Because they are so interesting, pleasurable? Interest or pleasure is an extension of the human experience much like my right pinky toe is too. Claiming Interest or pleasure is a purpose for life is absurd. You might here a great many people claim "The very sole purpose of my existence is to experience Interest or pleasure" but this makes as much sense as to say "the very sole purpose of my existence is to experience my right pinky toe".
Does contentment come at no cost though? Truely? The farmer has to work hard to pay his bills so that he can be content. Monks have to work for it by meditating all day. The experience of contentedness is a rare sight too, all around the world minus a few primitive tribes.
It's quite simple, an absence of anything, everything. There are no bananas or thingamajig, it's quite simple. In fact it couldn't be simpler.
Ahh, so your question is about purpose. Then what is all that stuff about meaning, or why you should carry on with living etc? That is all about what we are doing in this world we find ourselves in, which includes meaning, but nothing to do with any purposes in existence. It's true that people have purpose in their lives, but that is due to them having agency, hence purposes in action, reasons for action.
Any purposes in the existence of the existence we find ourselves in are a different issue and can only be coherent in reference to any agency who, or which, is responsible for its existence.
So there are two seperate purposes here;
The purposes of human agents.
The purpose of agents responsible for the existence of the existence we find ourselves in.
So it seems that you are asking about the purpose of life, well this is in the first category, the purposes of human agents. Well there are many answers to this, but none of them answer anything about the second category. That is a category error.
I have given purpose a lot of thought and have concluded that the answer is for humanity to secure its long term survival with a healthy social culture, which manages the planetary resources sustainably and cares for and maintains the biosphere. Is that not a worthy purpose?
What puzzles me is why you are taking it to be, or else insisting on making it, a question of cold analysis. Ask yourself whether there is anything or anyone that you care about deeply. or even a little. Does any activity interest you? Do you have any creative or spiritual aspirations? Do any artworks or works of philosophy, or literature or works of music move you? Do you love any activities like dancing or walking in the wilderness or any sports? Does any religion or spiritual teaching speak to your imagination, intuitions or emotions?
If the answer is 'no' to all, or even to any, of these questions, then have you considered the possibility that it is your being unable to see past cold, dead analysis, at least in some connections, that is doing the damage to your state of mind, and perhaps ruining or at least diminishing what could be a productive and flourishing life?
Why, this is the way we seem to be structured based on our constant willing nature.. we have survival needs and we have entertainment needs/wants to keep us busy. The idea of flow and hope are big parts of this. We want to get caught up in something so that we do not actually see existence itself or contend with our own boredom. We also have hope that some future state will bring more pleasure than the present state. This provides the carrot and stick.
You maintain your little world doing your pendulum swing.. Upkeep is really important here. You survive- go to work, consume, maintain your space.. In modern settings this is your property and living situation.. You look for entertainment.. this can be things to alleviate boredom including loneliness.. You look for a friend group, a mate, hobbies, etc. With a mate you may try to form a family unit so that you have an anchor- a unit to go back to.. A family is almost a manifestation of boredom multiplied.. If you have a unit of people, you will be that much more occupied.. Your world will be filled with concerns of other people at-the-ready for you to have to deal with.. Anything to avoid existence itself.. that churning will that moves your forward to the next task, ensuring you keep following activities related to cultural upkeep (survival, maintaining property, etc.), and making sure you find ways to entertain.
Don't you see though that they are one and the same thing? You don't KNOW what an absence of anything is because you can't ever experience it. It is simple because you just aren't looking at it deeply enough.
That purpose is the same as I stated in my OP, just to keep surviving and not die like all other animals. That is not a purpose, that is an instinct.
Sure John, there are various aspects of my existence that I find fun, beautifull, eccentric, enlightening but AS I POINTING OUT IN MY OP I am failing to see how these are a source for the purpose in ones life.
It is seriously like no one has actually read my OP and understands what I am saying in this thread.
Let me say it again:
There are some fleeting moments of joy and beauty that I can capture but it is foolish to live FOR those moments exclusively because they are transitory and fleeting, nor do they actually give any more purpose to one's life, it just makes life more "exciting". They are merely moments in which one is so elated with pleasure that they do not think of how empty and absurd their situation as a human is. If one were to live for pleasure alone it would leave one waiting in anticipation all the time and actually make life worse!
Happiness is an extension of the human experience much like my right pinky toe is too. Claiming happiness is a purpose for life is absurd. You might here a great many people claim "The very sole purpose of my existence is to experience happiness" but this makes as much sense as to say "the very sole purpose of my existence is to experience my right pinky toe".
Exactly, we are just kidding ourselves that our life is worth living or that it has purpose and/or meaning (self-created or otherwise)
What your describing sounds like a nightmare someone cooked up about a bunch of carbon based lifeforms who are too stupid to see the truth of their own situation and to cowardly to do anything about.
I think monks or ascetics who meditate would be an exception here as they focus on existential despair, emptiness and loneliness all day, although you don't seem to think so as the paragraph in your thread suggested. You claimed the lofty goal of nonexistence or a transcendental existence through ascetic practices is only a coping mechanism for the situation but never truly resolves it.
We don't need to find a desire for purpose, I think most people have desire for a purpose and if they don't then they are too stupid too or depressed. The issue is that people are saying their purpose in life are neutral objects... or thereabouts anyway. How irrational it is to say my purpose in life is my stuffed cat that died 10 years ago! Likewise, how irrational to say that your purpose in life is your wife, who shares the same resemblance of a stuffed cat only yet she provides you with more emotional responses, intellectual stimulation and opportunities for situational decision making. I don't care how much you love your dead cat mate, that just doesn't cut if for a purpose in life!
Bitter Crank I would like you to address this plz when u have the time.
I thought everyone knew.
It does only last once, time. Sustained by the need to relinquish. The requirement that life should have meaning to me, personally, seems unreasonably self-centered. It's not for me.
That is not at all what I meant or said. I never used the word adventure. I said that life is interesting. The North Pole isn't. That's why I'm not there.
Being alive is more interesting than being dead. — Harry Hindu
Quoting intrapersona
Death is no different from what I experienced before being alive - nothing. Death is simply non-existence after you existed. You didn't exist before you came into being, and that "experience" of not existing would be the same as after you existed. That is boring compared to existence. There is a much better chance that death isn't what you claim it to be - a superduper wizz bang thingamajig (and you are asking what the hell I mean?! Go figure.) I could see you excitedly running through that door labeled "Death" and then drop screaming into a void.
There's absolutely no need for that. (btw mods, what is the point in banning bigotry if other kinds of meanness are left up?)
Quoting intrapersona
How is it wrong? It doesn't mean I'm going to persue that goal to the detriment of others (nor is that necessarily the case with other goals for other people such as happiness or eudaimonia).
Quoting intrapersona
self-esteem = feeling good about oneself, not necessarily = other people feeling good about one
Harmony neither acts nor reasons, and contentment is the harmony of the lowest possible energy state of the complete system, when we no longer make distinctions between who we are and what we are doing. Instead of seeking happiness or pleasure or viewing work as drudgery, we merely accept them as we accept everything else in life including the evidence of our own senses and sensibilities. Which is why to be or not to be is not worth considering and why Socrates said death may be the greatest of all blessings. When we no longer make distinctions between who we are and what we are doing each moment can be a blessing.
It's irrational to dismiss that just because it is temporary. That it is temporary is inconsequential. For me, at least.
I don't live because I'm afraid to die. I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to right now.
No, but it's a start. How can you possibly live a good life if you have nothing to live for?
They can be a source of meaning, or better, they are the meaning. The purpose is to learn to see more and more in them, appreciate them more and work with them in a better, less self-oriented way. If you take the dead view of analysis, they will appear as nothing to you on account of a bogus absolutist fantasy; because you will be demanding more than what is given, which is to say more than you are ready to receive.
It is simply a hopeless artificial situation to be putting yourself in of looking at life from the perspective of this deadening analysis; it is just not capable of leading to anything but nihilism and despair. There is nothing imperative or absolutely true in such a lifeless picture; it is something we do to ourselves, and not something inevitably done to us by life.
For example, some people find their pet worth living or dying for. But living for a pet is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good life. You could live and love your pet (or whatever) and find it just as significant, and your life just as meaningful, without the melodramatic act of ascribing all your life's worth on it.
I understood what you meant, so it was not necessary to provide an example. Although, we were just discussing something to live for; not something to die for.
I stand by my point that, although having something to live for does not necessarily lead to a good life, it does seem necessary for the possibility of one. If you disagree, then please explain how that would be possible.
And I don't agree with your description of this as melodramatic. Perhaps in your example it is, but it's hardly melodramatic in my case, given that I include rather ordinary activities which give me pleasure in my answer to the question of what I live for.
What I live for encompasses innumerable things and activities, and is about contentedness, joy, and motivation, amongst other things. If these things were absent or unobtainable, then yes, I might conclude that I had nothing to live for. That's not melodramatic, it's reasonable.
Your problem is asking the question in the first place. Like the person who equates life only with happiness, you view living as a question of living "for a purpose." Lots of things happen in your life, but you only come away saying: "Is that it? I can't live just those small moments and be satisfied. I need some truth of purpose to reduce my entire life to. What's the purpose that will satisfy me?" What you seem to want (a purpose) is the very thing you deny is so (human life is just many different finite states).
This is the nihilism of purpose. An understanding which rejects the meaning of living a finite life for the notion some purpose must enter in from the outside and make things matter. With respect to living, it's self-defeating. It turns fulfilment and worth into an impossibility for your own life. Only the reductive fiction (purpose) can be worth anything. Life is just a nothingness to be ignored or miserably wallow in.
Asking the question "What purpose to life for?" is perhaps the worst question when it comes to understanding the meaning of living. One lives. There is never a nothingness to escape from. Meaning is replete.
I disagree. We were born into existence, and it does contain harms and it contains a structure which we did not create. We all cope, that's just a truism, but that does not mean "and then it was good."
This is correct, nothing does resolve the situation. You are stuck here until you're not. You will run into harm, you will create your own harm, you will find survival within your culture, you will experience boredom unless you create some sort of entertainment situation.
I don't think I understand that comment. "A genetic predisposition for survival in your thoughts" is confusing to me. And then I don't get how "your personal preferences over what you find fashionable" fits into the context of either my or your comment.
I'm not discussing whether something to live for seems necessary for a good life but whether it is necessary, sufficient, both, or neither. I say neither, because ascribing life's worth on something else is neither sufficient nor necessary to make it better. In fact it could make it worse, as in cases of destructive cults, where the idea of having something to live for is exploited and sometimes taken to its extreme.
You quoted me on what I said "I am not talking about the meaning of life here but a purpose that sustains one from avoiding inevitable death" then you talk about meaning. facepalm
Moreover, you don't have evidence that it only last once. It is only a self-centred inference because of your stubborn belief patterns. It might or might not be, YOU DON'T KNOW.
Say I was to correct your sentence for you though:
"The requirement that life should have purpose to me, personally, seems unreasonably self-centered. It's not for me."
What is self centred about that?
Are you sure of that? How do you know you weren't an mystical energy being who at the time of transference had all of it's memories temporarily disabled.
My point is that you can't know that for certain. I am so sick of foolish people inferring concrete absolutes about states they know NOTHING of, your as bad as a christian ffs. You don't KNOW what it was like before death, therefor don't say it was nothing... all you can say about it is that you don't know and you don't remember, but it could be something and it could be nothing.
I never claimed death was anything more than nothing. The term superduper wizz bang thingamajig is just to show you the absurdity of the component you seem to think is in my right pocket when you have absolutely NO idea what it is, yet you are going around yelling "I know everyone, I know... me! not you! but me! I know that there is nothing at death! SO there!"
Then obviously you didn't read my OP
It is vain, and illusory. It has nothing to do with the detriment of others, so you don't need to point that out. Likewise, how do you even prove that you had the free will to even claim ownership over what you accomplished? The libet experiment doesn't act in your favor there.
Quoting Ovaloid
Fair point, it still doesn't stop the fact that it is misguided and vein. But just think about if you had no one else to compare yourself to, and it was only you in existence? Of which standards would you set yourself up against? How would you know if you did well and could therefore be proud of yourself? It seems you NEED others to feel good about yourself, just not directly need them to see how good you are as you say, although it is my contention that the common ego secretely wishes for this anyhow no matter how much it tells itself that it only cares about it's own appraisal.
Quoting Ovaloid
It wasn't intended to be mean, it was intended to show you the vanity of your beliefs. As in by dropping dead on the floor right at the height of all your self-indulgent flattery. e.g. i'm so proud of my self, i'm so talented, mirror mirror on the wall bla bla bla
Ok, I see what you are saying. I meditate so I can see directly that when thought stops contentment arises and that is the lowest possible energy state of the complete system (the brain). But probably the lowest energy state is sleep or death. and harmony acts but doesn't reason, if it didn't how could harmony exist? Harmony needs action in order for it to exist. Where is the harmony in a completely still nothing?
I don't see how you got "to be or not to be is not worth considering" from "Socrates said death may be the greatest of all blessings." How does all of this making to be or not to be is not worth considering? Because I would be so content that it wouldn't matter? AKA:
Lol, What happens when the fetish goes stale?
It really doesn't though if you read my OP, fetish is like right pinky toe.
I said nothing about the fact that because it is temporary it is inconsequential (AKA why live if it's not forever)
I was claiming (if you even read my OP at all) that:
"There are some fleeting moments of joy and beauty that I can capture but it is foolish to live FOR those moments exclusively because they are transitory and fleeting, nor do they actually give any more purpose to one's life, it just makes life more "exciting". They are merely moments in which one is so elated with pleasure that they do not think of how empty and absurd their situation as a human is. If one were to live for pleasure alone it would leave one waiting in anticipation all the time and actually make life worse!
Happiness is an extension of the human experience much like my right pinky toe is too. Claiming happiness is a purpose for life is absurd. You might here a great many people claim "The very sole purpose of my existence is to experience happiness" but this makes as much sense as to say "the very sole purpose of my existence is to experience my right pinky toe"."
And your not wanting to die right now is the same as saying you don't want to die. Because in the future it is very likely that you will not want to die then either. Like the procrastinator who keeps putting of cleaning his room by saying "I will clean my room, just not now". It is a psychological coping mechanism, be aware of it!
Great post! It reflects what I was saying in my OP about how all animals live in the same way.
The very nature of a "good life" entails a purpose. If you don't think it does... THEN LIST WHY NOT!
I concur (Y)
I understand what you are saying John, but I just can't see how it relates to the OP:
"There are some fleeting moments of joy and beauty that I can capture but it is foolish to live FOR those moments exclusively because they are transitory and fleeting, nor do they actually give any more purpose to one's life, it just makes life more "exciting". They are merely moments in which one is so elated with pleasure that they do not think of how empty and absurd their situation as a human is. If one were to live for pleasure alone it would leave one waiting in anticipation all the time and actually make life worse!
Happiness is an extension of the human experience much like my right pinky toe is too. Claiming happiness is a purpose for life is absurd. You might here a great many people claim "The very sole purpose of my existence is to experience happiness" but this makes as much sense as to say "the very sole purpose of my existence is to experience my right pinky toe".
I just don't see how you can view others as the central focal point of the meaning and purpose in your life? Whence came this meaning in other people?
If I put away my deadening analysis of life and my struggle to find purpose then all I am left with is an ignorant human who goes around attaching itself to any fruitless desire and then claiming it to be the absolute source of purpose in their life (doesn't soun too far from some of the replies on here, including yours ((no offense)) :D ).
True but you didn't define "You could live and love your pet (or whatever) and find it just as significant, and your life just as meaningful"
the whole purpose is define how that occurs.
Did you read my OP, if you can please respond to that as it is directly relevant to what you claim to be purpose in life:
"There are some fleeting moments of joy and beauty that I can capture but it is foolish to live FOR those moments exclusively because they are transitory and fleeting, nor do they actually give any more purpose to one's life, it just makes life more "exciting". They are merely moments in which one is so elated with pleasure that they do not think of how empty and absurd their situation as a human is. If one were to live for pleasure alone it would leave one waiting in anticipation all the time and actually make life worse!
Happiness is an extension of the human experience much like my right pinky toe is too. Claiming happiness is a purpose for life is absurd. You might here a great many people claim "The very sole purpose of my existence is to experience happiness" but this makes as much sense as to say "the very sole purpose of my existence is to experience my right pinky toe"."
You imply that being "satisfied" quenches your need for a purpose in life.
"I'm afraid." Gee, that's great, man. Okay, what now? Who cares?
How am I denying that a purpose is so? Or claiming that a purpose will lead me to satisfaction? A purpose will lead me to living a fulfilling life, is a fulfilling life one that is necessarily satisfactory?
Then obviously you didn't read it thoroughly enough, it said a great many things... it is just the illiterate people who are unable to spell out what it actually ISN'T saying because they want to come across as vindictive or sneering.
I understand this. At the end of it all though all that can be concluded is "Life is just a nothingness to be ignored or miserably wallow in"
So therefore, why live? Like I said in my OP, the only conclusion I can make is that it is because I don't want to die, like all other animals.
No it isn't, I said that claiming happiness to be the sense of purpose in ones life is absurd. There are some fleeting moments of joy and beauty that I can capture but it is foolish to live FOR those moments exclusively because they are transitory and fleeting, nor do they actually give any more purpose to one's life, it just makes life more "exciting". They are merely moments in which one is so elated with pleasure that they do not think of how empty and absurd their situation as a human is. If one were to live for pleasure alone it would leave one waiting in anticipation all the time and actually make life worse!
Happiness is an extension of the human experience much like my right pinky toe is too. Claiming happiness is a purpose for life is absurd. You might here a great many people claim "The very sole purpose of my existence is to experience happiness" but this makes as much sense as to say "the very sole purpose of my existence is to experience my right pinky toe".
If you didn't see that then your are blind.
So, in your thoughts (mainly if not completely unconscious) are programs that operate for survival. If someone puts something close to your eye you will blink, etc. Likewise if u are on the edge of a cliff you will be scared to go over. So in your thoughts, there is a predisposition for the genetics to play a role in maintaining the thoughts to keep the organism surviving.
You are claiming that it is YOU who is choosing not to live "I don't have the slightest inclination or reason not to live as long as I possibly can." when in reality it IS YOUR SURVIVAL MECHANISM and not your personality, or your preferences over what you find fashionable (not talking about clothing here). For instance, I find oranges more fashionable to me than apples.
I didn't say it was rational, I see it is what ALL animals on earth share instinctively and unconsciously. In fact that would be considered pre-rational and a matter of scientific fact.
All other so called purposes of popular fashion have been considered to be absurd.
Bravo, on point!
Yes you did - "It seems after some many years of analysis of this question that all I can rationally say is that I live only because I am afraid to die, like any other animal on earth." If it's irrational to be afraid of dying, then how do you find it possible to rationally think otherwise?
Quoting intrapersona
How do you know that the chipmunk fears death if it is not a thinking, rational being?
Then it seems that we are getting the short end of the stick. Like we are thrown in to a prison... Like we are actors out on loan with no recompense
You misinterpreted this. I rationally concluded............ the the only rational conclusion is.......... that all animals have an IRRATIONAL fear of death.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Haha, seriously? I would think you would know better than to try and argue something like that. Just bring a flame thrower to it's lips... are you now going to argue that it will come closer and try to kiss the flame? right, keep going heister... keep going... haha
Yes, and indeed is absurd as my OP points out.
Whelp, you've already failed at being rational, here. Whoops.
Quoting intrapersona
I don't fear death.
Quoting intrapersona
Haha, yes, haha. I'm arguing that. Fear is a concept of and from the mind. Nothing more.
Who are YOU though? Do you also claim to have free will and have proof for it too?
Do you not get scared if someone holds a gun to your head? Maybe you're not afraid of the concept of the death which is something quite different. Your heart rate would increase if there is a gun to your head or if you or on a cliff face about to fall off. Fact is, your subconscious impulses run the show and it is like try to claim you aren't afraid of blinking when someone throws something at your eye. Just because you aren't screaming "nooo please i don't wanna die" doesn't mean your biological brain is unaffected by stimuli that indicate the certain demise of it's organism.
Anyway please keep this on subject.
A conscious being.
Quoting intrapersona
I don't know what this has to do with anything, but no.
Quoting intrapersona
No, I already told you. I do not fear death. Not fearing death does not mean I do not value my life.
Quoting intrapersona
You're telling yourself this, right..?
You are impossible to do philosophy with. Not only are you subject to bigotry (not being able to see the other person's point of view because of your own desire to be right/close mindedness) but you constantly fail to elaborate on anything you are retorting. By proof of this, I suspect an inflamed comment in retaliation, if not then I will respond to your off topics 'personal' statements that are brief and are without explanation or reasoning.
It feels as though you have set up the problem so that no answer can ever be acceptable. Re the OP, everything is an "extension of the human experience".
Still, a healthy fetish can make you forget your ennui, if only for a little while.
A more relevant question is whether there is any reason to commit suicide. But even then, you don't just die when you come up with a reason(s), and you can suicide without a reason anyway.
Living is the default state, so you don't need a reason for it. Although a lot of people do seem to find it psychologically gratifying to feel as if they're living for some grand meaning or purpose. But then the question is not what's my reason for living, but rather what reason should I posit (for living) in order to psychologically gratify myself (and not, to actually live, because that happens anyway).
That is the issue. How can transitory pleasure be a purpose if it is without meaning and doesn't stay consistent?
Purpose would be a goal, something that isn't impossible to answer. Imagine if you knew a cosmic meaning of why we exist in galaxies and that in 300,000,000,000,000 years time our efforts as a species paid off and you knew what it was. Wouldn't complacency over run everything you did in life?
"John why r u doing that u silly billy?@?1?! Don't u see that u r wasting all ur time n efortz?"
"oh ya, but this is for tha singularity in billions of years time so no prob ya kno?"
That is a very sound conception of how purpose is usually implemented in human life.
It is in accordance with what I said in my OP about how animals have no purpose in life other than to survive and not die because they are afraid to die.
I would like to add that having pleasure as a reason to live is absurd, as I pointed out in my OP.
It seems you are saying that purpose is just a mechanism to gratify ones self, to make one feel as if their life has value when it really doesn't. Is this correct? So when people say "my life is worth living", in reality they are fooling themselves. Correct?
I look at it like, purposes only apply to individual ends and aims. I eat because it am hungry, find warmth because I'm cold, do activities because I'm bored, drink because I'm an alcoholic :), drive my car because I want to go somewhere, etc. I don't think you can combine all these separate purposes for separate actions, under an overall umbrella purpose. So that you eat because you're hungry, and drink because you're thirsty, and yet you both eat and drink because of a larger overall purpose like say living for god, experiencing pleasure, improving the world, whatever purpose you pick. It's like doing something for one reason, and yet you're *really* doing something for another reason.
Oh, so you're "doing" philosophy and not me, eh? Given your appeal to science here earlier, and the quote from Marx on your bio, I'm actually more inclined to think that you are not "doing" philosophy. This cop out of yours is rather uninspired, frankly. C'mon.
Quoting intrapersona
Your viewpoint is an impenetrable and irrational drivel. If this makes me a bigot in your eyes, then I'm okay with that.
Quoting intrapersona
Herein lies your problem, sweetie pie. You're trying to necessarily prove that your experience is the same for everyone else. If you think you've rationally thought through something, well then that's great! Doing so, however, doesn't mean your rationale is the truth, or is reflective of others' experiences.
Quoting intrapersona
Aaaaaand you're still fumbling over this, >:O
It does not logically follow in any way that because animals strive for survival most of the time, that such is directly a result of their fearing death.
I do not think you understand the nature of a fetish. A true fetish (and not just an affectation) is decidedly not transitory.
Try it. What do you have to lose? (Apparently your life is meaningless anyway.)
Hmmm, okay--still not sure I get that, though. For one, it doesn't make any sense to me to suppose that "I" am somehow different than something like a "survival mechanism" built into me. "I" am simply the totality of my body, and in terms of consciousness, including personality, particular brain states (which are dynamic). Something like a "survival mechanism" would also be just a factor of how my body, including my brain, happens to be constructed/happens to function, hence that "survival mechanism" would be identical to (a part of) me.
When I say that "I don't have the slightest inclination . . ." I'm simply noting that thoughts questioning whether I should continue to live don't at all occur to me, and when someone like yourself suggests that they should, it just strikes me as absurd to even consider that it would be a worthwhile thing to ponder. I'm not making any claims re why I'm that way beyond noting that that's how my body, including my brain, happen to work.
Purposes in that sense of the term are simply overarching goals that one has in mind. As with everything else, that is going to ultimately obtain, if it does, simply because that's how that individual's brain happens to work. So that's how that could be one's purpose even in the absence of meaning for that pleasure, and even though that pleasure doesn't remain unchanged.
At that, it doesn't seem to be the case that anyone's brain works so that x would be one's purpose but so that one doesn't also assign meaning to x.
However, re "doesn't remain unchanged," that's certainly the case, as a fortiori, nothing remains unchanged over time.
Quoting intrapersona
Purposes are necessarily present to consciousness. They do not exist otherwise. So both human and non-human animals only have purposes insofar as those are explicitly present to consciousness. That's not to deny that a lot of behavioral tendencies are evolutionarily selected for because they make survival until the possibility of procreation more likely--and that's simply because contrary tendencies are not as likely to be genetically passed on, because the potential parent creatures are less likely to survive to procreate when those characteristics obtain, but it would be misconceived to identify that fact with a "purpose."
Fear likewise only obtains when it's present to consciousness.
Yes, I know this distinction, I know that we as limited beings can't conceive of the reality of no existence. But we are discussing intellectualisation of the life we find ourselves in. So just as we can come up with the idea of 1+1 =2, or infinity, we can come up with the idea of nonexistence.
I bring it up though, because it might well be the case following death, so it is potentially an option for action in life, just take an overdose and you're there, in a state of absolute nonexistence, the purpose is then clear, there is none.
This is a conflation between instinct and intellectual strategic action. Also you have ignored my classification of purposes. It's almost as though you are not interested in discussing purpose.
Going back to instinct, all cellular life forms(to generalise) have agency, if they have agency they are at liberty to persue purposes, they have purpose. Even if that purpose is dictated by the processes of instinct. Higher animals like humans and primates etc, have the ability to develop individual and group strategies, so they have a wider scope of purposes within their capacity. But they are still within the first category of purposes.
So are you going now to appeal to the second category of purposes, those in reference to any agency, or process resulting in the existence of this whole world we find ourselves in? Because this seems to be what you are looking towards in the OP.
You're misunderstanding if you think I have said that life is all positive, just a bed of roses with no thorns. Living fully, though, is not a matter of merely coping. Whether you see life as predominately good or bad is always up to you and is a function of your thinking; there is no objective measure even of what life is, let alone of what it is worth.
Yes I agree with your assessment, but this does not take away our (limited I know) freedom for a bit of autonomy, freedom in action, freedom to create something as we please. Not to mention, a choice to help others.
I know it's not much to look forward to in the greater scheme of things. But it really doesn't matter what we think, this is our lot, right now, we have a choice to be constructive, creative and help move the race along, rather than in the direction of more suffering, or towards oblivion. Not to mention, the gift of a mind with the ability to dream, to imagine.
Quite, we might naively think we have little worth, but this is not established, it can only be a conceit at best. A human life might have great importance, purpose and meaning, but we just don't know anything of this subtle complexity. Surely it is our duty to observe a reverence for what we have been gifted in the wonder of what it might represent beyond our narrow little window on its beauty and reality.
We might be in class 1 at kindergarten, perhaps we should stop throwing our rattle out of the pram now, it really is time we were nappy trained.
Can you explain the difference for me? It certainly seems that one sustains oneself with the purpose to avoid death, and that death is inevitable, yet you seem to want another purpose for sustaining life. Well I offer the purpose of overcoming one's need to sustain oneself, one's need for the the personal continuation that then requires in turn a purpose.
Death is inevitable for physical beings, but it has no significance except to that which sustains itself. Self has no purpose, it is unnecessary and harmful to life. So life's purpose is to end self before death ends life.
People live good lives regardless of whether they live for something or nothing. A good life doesn't suddenly arise from having something to live for. Nor would the lack of something to live for imply a bad life.
I'm beginning to notice a pattern here.
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting intrapersona
Yes, I did read your OP, and I didn't think much of it, to be honest. Hence my short reply.
I didn't regurgitate what you said word for word, but I don't think that it's too far off. But perhaps I misunderstood.
I don't live [i]exclusively[/I] for those moments, like I said, so that criticism doesn't apply to me. How many people do? They might [i]say[/I] that they live for those moments when asked what they live for, but I think that people just tend to mention the highlights. Whereas, if they gave it enough thought, they would realise that the "whole package" - highlights included - very much matters. You could scrap some stuff, but just having the highlights would seem to be lacking something valuable and important.
I think the fact that such moments are temporary (or, in your words, transitory and fleeting) doesn't really come into it - except as one of the reasons that they're actually worthwhile.
And I think you're wrong when you say that they don't give any more purpose to one's life, but just make life more "exciting". They can do, and actually do in some cases, and you can lose the scare quotes from around the word "exciting".
Quoting intrapersona
The last part of the former is usually implicit when people say the latter. So, in that sense, yes. But I was emphasising it to imply that that can change at some point in the future, and endure over a period of time.
Quoting intrapersona
You don't know that, and you're not qualified to make that judgement. But my point was just that it's possible. It had nothing to do with probability.
Quoting intrapersona
I'll take that with a pinch of salt.
I don't feel like saying much else about your OP. I disagree with the gist of it, and I think your comparison of happiness with your "pinky toe" is rather silly, and shouldn't be taken seriously.
A good life doesn't just randomly arise out of nothingness for no reason. There are things that you can do to have a better chance of obtaining a good life. There are some basic fundamental things, like making sure you have sufficient shelter, food, water, and warmth when it is cold. These minimal things are, for almost everyone, a perquisite to living a good life. Whereas having nothing to live for is very unlikely to lead to a good life. I don't believe that you'll even be able to provide any realistic examples of someone with nothing to live for who is coincidentally living a good life. More likely that they just don't realise what they're living for, and what they're living for is most likely what makes their life a good life.
And here we have another "philosopher" who doesn't bother educating themselves in modern science, or more specifically, modern neurology and psychology - who doesn't bother integrating knowledge from all areas of investigation in to a consistent whole and who thinks that unfalsifiable theories are just as powerful as falsifiable ones.
We have scientific evidence that when a certain area of the brain is damaged, we lose the ability to speak, or to remember faces, etc. You seem to think that when the whole brain is damaged that we retain these abilities. If there is an afterlife then that diminishes the value of this life.
Life can be good exactly because you're free from having something to live for. In fact, having something to live for will likely prevent you from having other things to live for.
For example, those who live for their professional careers and therefore neglect their children, partners, parents, or friends. In what sense could their lives be good? Surely not by having careers to live for. If they would instead live for their children, then others would be neglected. If they would live for all of them, then they would live for none of them in particular.
Most people try to care as well as possible for their careers, children, partners, parents, friends etc.. without living for any of them in particular. The latter is for single-minded fanatics, marketers, ideologues or war mongers hoping to make people give up their lives for some special interest.
I don't think so. I think by being brought into existence you are exposed to many harms and stress. We MUST put forth energy. There is no default sleep mode that is optional. It is an all or nothing package. We MUST contend with survival, getting along in society, being comfortable, and we MUST go about seeking this or that goal. To have children is to create a situation where they must DEAL with survival-through-cultural-upkeep and boredom-transformed-into-goal-seeking. The perpetual willing nature of the human animal propels us forward. We are always becoming but never being. On top of this "structural" suffering of the pendulum of our survival/entertainment needs and wants, is the contingent suffering of ALL the negative things we encounter. Mindset or not, we are harmed by being exposed to existence.
I contended earlier that families (at least the modern day version thereof) are just ways to combat boredom. It is boredom literally multiplied. One does not want to look inward too much, lest one sees the sheer instrumentality. Rather, it is presumed that if one is concerned with another beings' outcome, this will alleviate one's own need to introspect. Now, of course that is just one "background" reason out of many cultural ones (i.e. social expectations, babies are cute, accidents, the need to anchor one's direction into a role and responsibility, etc. etc.), but it is one manifestation of our own unwillingness to look at our own nature of striving for nothing- boredom and survival-through-cultural upkeep. A family unit to be concerned with tries to deflect the question from oneself and thus perpetuate the cycle.
As Schopenhauer said:
It lies, then, in the very nature of our existence to take the form of constant motion, and to offer no possibility of our ever attaining the rest for which we are always striving. We are like a man running downhill, who cannot keep on his legs unless he runs on, and will inevitably fall if he stops; or, again, like a pole balanced on the tip of one’s finger; or like a planet, which would fall into its sun the moment it ceased to hurry forward on its way. Unrest is the mark of existence.
-Studies in Pessimism, by Arthur Schopenhauer
On the Vanity of Existence.
Death is not a complete system. A car engine idling nicely is a complete system expressing the lowest possible energy state, while engine parts scattered around a garage is an incomplete system that must first be assembled.
Harmony is not any particular action, but the relationship between different actions. If the car engine is not properly tuned it will not express the lowest possible energy state but, instead, it will rumble and backfire and whatnot. A more common example in physics is two pendulum clocks hung on a wall which will vibrate or shake the wall compelling one another to eventually swing in unison. Once they do swing in unison they no longer have to vibrate the wall to maintain the relationship.
They form what is called a self-organizing system and if I bump one clock the wall will help to absorb some of the energy preventing the two from swinging further out of sync. Similarly, during an earthquake the two clocks will swing wildly out of sync absorbing some of the energy and helping to preserve all three. This is the same principle used today to prevent skyscrapers from swaying too much and it expresses the resilience, efficiency, and creativity of a self-organizing system, but when they swing in unison they neither act nor reason to maintain their relationship.
Contentment comes at no cost nor does death. When we die, all our trials and tribulations are over and you could say that death is similar to the harmony of the lowest possible energy state in that respect.
It makes little sense to say that "we are harmed by being exposed to existence". We are not exposed to existence; we either exist or we do not. And as I have already pointed out, no one is suggesting that existence does not involve some harm.
It is true that we are always becoming; becoming is being. Be-ing is not a static changeless condition; how could it be? Nothing you say in your response addresses the main point I made; that there is no objective measure of the worth of a life in terms of pain vs pleasure or anything else.
As Chesterton writes:
"Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad except himself."
In the passage you quoted Schopenhauer writes that "unrest is the mark of existence". Taken in the the most literal sense that is trivially true. But if by "unrest' he means 'dissatisfaction' then the fitting response would be. "How could you possibly know that all creatures, including humans are predominately dissatisfied? Dissatisfaction and satisfaction are feelings, and it seems perfectly obvious that when it comes to humans the ratios of these feelings to one another vary enormously in different lives." And of course no one should be so unreasonable as to suggest that Schopenhauer's gloomy, perverse and even gloating habit of cultivating his tendency to focus on his dissatisfaction, and the thoughts attending them, could have amplified his feelings of dissatisfaction, and cemented his profession of pessimism, now should they?
Ok, I understand and fair enough but no matter what activity you do, you are still enganged in an activity that encompasses all of them called "living" and it is NOT absurd to ask "why live". When someone asks "why live?" they are asking "what is the purpose of living?" which doesn't seem absurd to ask.
Yes purpose exists in individual components of tasks in life but the one task we all have no matter what all other tasks may be is the one of living. You could say it is the MOST deserving of having a purpose and yet we can't seem to find a rational solution to this yet.
Would you also call the effiel tower part of you because it inhabits the same material you are made from? Or shares the atmosphere around you?
That which you can not control in your mind is not you, that which IS you is that which you are aware of and in control of. YOU don't beat your heart, your brain does it for you. YOU don't flinch at the faintist hint of harm but your brain does. catch my drift?
That suggests then that you are complacent with your experience of the world and what you know of it. Some of us aren't happy with what knowledge we are given about our existence and it leads us down many different paths of ascetic practices, psychedelic drug use and excessive philosophy reading to try and make sense of something that can't be made sense of in order to make us realize there is no point in trying and then we give up slowly or instantly in to complacency. As someone else on here suggested previously, what philosopher isn't neurotic in some sense already?
So you are saying our existence is ultimately absurd and we just give ourselves small purposes to take our mind of that fact. There could never be an ultimate goal because it is absurd. Where is your proof that there isn't a cosmic/universal purpose though? For all we know, there could be.
Quoting Terrapin Station
That suggests that all other animals have consciousness, since they display signs of fear (neurologically too)
because it might well be the case following death, so it is potentially an option for action in life, just take an overdose and YOU MIGHT BE there, in a state of absolute nonexistence, the purpose is then clear, there is none.
Just contradicted yourself, you say it might be then you say it is.
how did you get from "they have liberty to pursue purposes" to "they have purpose'?
I wouldn't call being afraid to fall of a cliff "intellectual strategic action", more like instinct.
I also wouldn't call this a classification of purposes:
"that the answer is for humanity to secure its long term survival with a healthy social culture, which manages the planetary resources sustainably and cares for and maintains the biosphere."
That is just something that humans keep in check in order to sustain a healthy existence, it isn't a purpose to live.
I don't really know what you are saying, I never saw a distinct classification of purposes. Nor do I see what the illusion of agency has anything to do with it. SOrry.
I agree, but what does it mean to live "fully"? To take every opportunity you get? Why? To live a more dynamic lifestyle? Why? More interesting? Why does an interesting life equate to more value? Wouldn't a more purposeful life equate to more value? If you look at anything that is interestng but meaningless and purposeless, its novelty seems to fade rather quickly.
The meaning of life is what life means, what it IS. The purpose of life is why were are. Some might say the meaning of life entails the purpose but I think that is a misguided understand of the classifications.
I said in my OP that the only rational conclusion I could reach was that we like any other animal just want to avoid death, that is our ONLY reason to live.
I want to find another purpose to life because that one we have is just absurd and downright foolish. It is circular. Why live? Not to die of course! Well why not die? To live of course! Why live then? To not die of course! ........................................................................................................ *cough*
You didn't list why not, you just stated your premise again.
Explain why you think people don't need purpose in life in order to live good lives.
What is good? Is good happy? Fulfilled? How much of the time are they like that in order to termed "good life"?
For me the point is to live a life "with heart"; meaning to live in ways that cultivate those things which are the most important to you. What is most important to you, though, is not something that may be coldly calculated, but something that must be felt. The way I see it, things are purposeless if they do not touch your emotions; that is if you don't feel them. What, for example, would be the point of marrying someone if you felt no love for them? Or paying lip-service to some religion or other if it really meant nothing to you; if it didn't inspire any feelings of transcendence or love in you?
yes, that would be strange indeed.
Quoting Sapientia
I was saying that purpose can not be happiness or pleasure. You havn't said anything about why it isn't, you just told me that people think their lives matter and that a finite existence makes life more valueable (which I can see the sense in).
I asked you to reply to my OP about claiming extensions of human experience as purpose is absurd but you didn't manage to do that.
Ok, how many people out there still live life and are pretty much emotionless? How about the 40-50-60 year olds who are lost the love interest in their spouse but continue to engage in meaningless toil 8 hours of the day? For what? Why do THEY live?
Like I said in my OP john, claiming experiences (or any other facet of your body or bodily functions) as a purpose to living is absurd. You know that if I say to you "I live for my right pinky toe" or "I live for my dead stuffed cat int he living room" is completely ridiculous. Well your statement about living for your emotions is no different than for a dead stuffed cat.
Yeah, except you can't explain why so you just sit back and call it silly because you don't have intellectual nerve to actually refute it. Perhaps dare I say, even the intellectual capability to refute it!
You know it's true deep down, but you don't want to admit it because it disables all of your illusory beliefs you set up to give your life value and meaning.
Don't blame me for being silly because you are afraid to change your thinking, that is a form of bigotry.
Let's see if you can respond to this as a philosopher, someone with high regard for reasoning and without some form of hate, aggression or tension of any kind who resorts to words like "silly" to try and attack the other party.
Buddhist monk, meditates all day in complacency and peace.
Correlation is not causation, there is still huge debate over whether the brain gives rise to conscious state. Don't act as if your position is fact when it is not. I have a good understand of neurology and modern science, my point was about you believing in fairytales that you can't prove. Don't say there is a fire-breathing dragon in the ukraine when you can't prove it. Don't say what exists after death when you can't 100% prove it. If any position out of the two of ours adapts the scientific method the most it is mine, have a fun time trying to write a hypothesis about how you can PROVE what happens at death.
That is a good post. It seems living for your career is mosten often like a mouse-wheel which once you get off at 60 or in a mid-life crisis you begin to realise how purposeless it really is and how much you wasted your life. And the ones that actually enjoyed their life weren't pre-occupied with a purpose but where just passively enjoying the beauty of life without trying to possess it, find meaning in it... etc.
I think we just found a solution to the thread ;)
A life without any feeling is a dead life, no? I don't know how many people continue to live with their spouses despite feeling zero love for them. I certainly would not do that. I don't know how many people toil meaninglessly day in and day out; I certainly would not do that, either. Those who do those things must be doing them in the interests of something, no? Whatever those interests are, we might not applaud them; but it is a matter for the individual how they choose to live, isn't it? And don't people generally choose how to live on the basis of something they give priority to; that is on the basis of something that (they at least think) is most meaningful to them? Or maybe some people choose to live a completely unexamined life; choose not to think, but to just 'go with the flow'. But wouldn't even that be because the thing most important to them is to feel safe and secure and unbothered, or not to have the face the difficulties and insecurities that might come up if they actually started thinking about their lives?
People don't live for their feelings in the way they might live for some stupid fetish or obsession like your ridiculous examples of 'pinkie' and 'stuffed cat'. Arguably hardly anyone lives for such things at all. People don't live "for their feelings" (unless you mean for stimulation or intensity) they live with more or less feeling or they perhaps sometimes they don't live with any feeling at all. Or they live with a constant feeling of dissatisfaction due to their tendency to ask inappropriate (because unanswerable or even incoherent) and extremely unhelpful cold, dead rational questions which cause their lives to be something that merely happens to them while they are busy thinking about something else altogether unimportant.
wouldn't the engine off but assembled be the lowest energy state, or if not 1rpm?
So it is because they ask those questions that their lives are full of dissatisfaction? Surely it is the other way round... *ahem*
Sounds very similar to:
Quoting John
You are reading me too literally. You have to see the correlation and NOT the literal transcription of what I wrote.
I was saying that to claim pleasure as a purpose is just as absurd to claim a stuffed cat is. They are both components of the human experience, they are just things that happen to you and you can't cling to them, hold them in your hands and exclaim it is the sole purpose for your existence.
Don't think it is true? Go in to the street and ask people what they live for. They will respond with things like "to love, to have sex, to eat ice cream, to play football" all pleasure based.
You are not reading me literally enough; I didn't say that people should live for pleasure, but that they should live with, and, I want to emphasize, not for the sake of, feeling.
I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
So, the first thing I'd say is that one very big reason I continue to live is that I know the toll suicide takes on loved ones and I'm too cowardly to do it anyway (I was very close & learned that truth about myself and it crushed me.)
But I guess that would answer a different question: Why don't you stop living?
So, what I live for. Very rarely, but often enough that I can't chalk it up to a handful of meaningless anomalies, I experience a piece of a music or a gathering of friends or a book or whatever in this strange very intense way. Everything has a different quality. I feel like I'm actually seeing things for what they are, and what they are is way more expansive then I thought. I understand myself better too. Things are simpler, but also more complex, and my normal way of viewing things seems incredibly flat and limited. It's clear to me during these experiences that there is a rich, complex layer of life - I'm fine with calling it spiritual - which is a kind of transcendental condition for the brittle simplistic habit-driven life I usually live. It's clear to me, then, that there's a lot I don't understand and that the world can have this deeply meaningful spiritual texture that is usually foreclosed (one poor but suggestive enough analogy is to the kind of meaning and import you feel as a kid playing or exploring your grandparent's home etc. It's a bit like a grown-up version of that) Importantly, these experiences don't feel hallucinatory or supernatural or surreal - they feel hyperreal. These experiences are sometimes joyful (though they're just as often painful) and it's a joy that's very difficult to convey. (The problem is that I'm trying to talk in my brittle habit-driven state about that which exceeds it.)
So, I always know that sort of thing is out there, that it feels inexhaustible, and that I'm usually living in a kind of fake sedimented thought-world. That gives me a kind of direction, though it's hard to pin that down exactly. I've learned that seeking it out directly doesn't work - you can go too far too fast (one image I've always liked is that of old mystics warning young kabbalists that if they try to breach the garden of eden before they're read, they'll be cut down by the swords of the cherubim.) I think the condition for experiencing that state more than very rarely (and experiencing it as something joyful rather than painful) is to be ok with yourself. And that involves being a better person during mundane everyday life. And being a better person seems to involve shedding the faulty ad-hoc self-identifications and strategies of interaction developed as a kid and teenager. And being able to shed those involves paying a lot more attention to the patterns in your life.
So that gives me somewhere to start. And I've started a bit. It's slow work, but I think I'm making some progress. But not enough clearly: witness my endless antagonistic interactions on this board.
I like what you say here cs, it is very well expressed and I can relate to it to a most high degree. 8-)
All that striving that Mystics go on about is a different enterprise to this personal spiritual contentment we are talking about. It is a formal tutoring of intense personal development, a hot housing, designed to accelerate the development of the person. It is I think increasingly irrelevant in the modern world and is more a remnant of how spirituality was viewed and accessed in the past. There are I think a small number of people around now for whom it is appropriate, but for the majority of people it is an inappropriate, counter productive process, which can lead to psychological issues and feelings of failure etc.. I think that in the modern world of intense mental stimulation, financial freedom and domestic comfort, we face an entirely different set of issues for which traditional practice is not well suited and there is a mass movement, known as The New Age, in which people have begun to develop more appropriate approaches and techniques to embrace a natural spirituality in the modern world. Unfortunately it is a bit chaotic with false prophets and one is required to sort the wheat from the chaff to a certain degree. A formal school, or rigorous analysis of this movement has not been done yet as far as I know(I know it has been attempted a few times by some groups), it will emerge at some point I expect.
You will have to allow me a little room for my style of writing that is not academically precise. Read between the lines a little. I didn't contradict myself, but the way I wrote it was unclear and imprecise. Did you not understand this?
Anyway, where I said it "is clear, there is none", I should have explained that on the assumption that following death, there is a complete lack of existence, this would be the case.
Well I don't know the rigourous logical steps involved in this, but surely if an organism is at liberty to pursue purposes, at some point it will pursue them, or at the very least might do so. If it does pursue one of these purposes, it can be described as having purpose in its action.
So you have an ambition to stop being absurd and foolish. Well death doesn't seem to fulfil that ambition. A fool does not become wise in death.
And yet I suggest to you that it is not wise to be so ambitious.
Can you catch this snake before it eats itself?
An answer to the question, what is the meaning or purpose in my life? Is a person's life cannot have meaning or purpose independent of the species or race of which they are a member. So their purpose and meaning is equivalent to the purpose or meaning of the species or race as a whole. The purpose and meaning of the race as a whole is,
"that the answer is for humanity to secure its long term survival with a healthy social culture, which manages the planetary resources sustainably and cares for and maintains the biosphere."
You obviously don't know what you are talking about. How could there be a "huge debate" over whether the brain gives rise to consciousness when we don't have one single case of a person without a brain being conscious, and when every person with a perfectly functioning brain are conscious.
It is you who believe in fairy tales of "spirits" and the "supernatural" (theories that can't be falsified) having the same explanatory power that scientific theories (theories that can be falsified) have. If there were a fire-breathing dragon in Ukraine, you and I could both prove or disprove it by going there and finding evidence of it's existence if not see it directly. That would be a falsifiable claim. Theories about the existence of some supernatural domain aren't.
My proof comes from the fact that every person who dies their body decomposes and they never come back. If you are saying that you are more than your body, then the burden of proof lies on your shoulders, not mine.
The mind and brain are not correlations. They are different aspects of the same thing. When we look at other people, we don't see their minds, we see their brains. Our minds are representations of the world, which means that what we experience is a model of the world, not the actual world. This means that when you look at someone, you are experiencing a representation of them. Brains are mental representations of others' mental activity. Lungs are representations of others' respiratory activity. Mental activity is all about making representations of the world. It's similar to how a computer program can represent the inner workings of the computer on a monitor. The images are not the inner workings. They are representations of those inner workings caused by other processes that are not the process being represented because it would redundant and useless to know how it's being represented when all you want to know is what is being represented.
I'm not obliged to list anything from nothing, nor explain an absence of necessity. Those who believe that purpose is necessary for a good life, and knows of causal or logical relations from which such a necessity could arise, are obliged to list what those relations are. But I don't know of such relations, and therefore I have no reason to believe that they exist, nor provide you with a list of why not.
Quoting intrapersona
Right, but what's the point of questioning the meaning of 'good' in a discussion on whether purpose is necessary or sufficient for a good life?
Any system obeys the principle that it requires significant content and a greater context which, combined, enforces a Conservation of Creativity and Efficiency. A black hole, for example, has no observable or even conceivable surface and its humble identity makes it the most efficient for anything its size at distributing any mass, energy, and information. In fact, black holes are largely responsible for the distribution of the visible universe. Because of the conservation of Creativity and Efficiency, the neurons in our brains obey the same principle and are also the most efficient at conveying any mass, energy, and information. What that reflects is the symmetry of a universal recursion in the law of identity where the identity of everything revolves around bullshit or what's missing from this picture, but a statistic of one remains an oxymoron ensuring any observable system must have a minimum resilience and complexity. You can also think of it as analogous to the initial impetus of the Big Bang still expanding to this day like a wave on the ocean because the identity of everything goes down the nearest convenient rabbit hole or toilet of your personal preference, but in a somewhat orderly fashion.
It requires metaphoric networking systems logic to fully express which can treat everything as both animate and inanimate, existent and nonexistent, because yin will always transform into yang and vice versa. One of the more controversial aspects is that it suggests modern science is Vaudeville slapstick where westerner's have eschewed their sense of humor in search of greater truth and beauty.
I think that that's either contradictory or misses the point. It would be contradictory if we're talking about having nothing to live for, yet having freedom and/or a good life as something to live for. (And interpreting them as something to live for seems to be the only sensible way to interpret them). Or it would miss the point if you're not talking about having nothing to live for, but rather about having something to live for with some degree of freedom from it, and misplacing the emphasis on the latter.
Quoting jkop
Which isn't necessarily bad.
Quoting jkop
Your example is far too particular to support any more general point. You can have both the one and the other as being something to live for, and it's possible to maintain a good balance. That can be a good life.
Quoting jkop
I don't agree. I just think that you're reading [i]way more[/I] into that phrase than I am, and, as a result, we are, to some extent, talking past one another.
By my interpretation, those people who care about their careers, children, partners, parents, friends etc., [i]obviously[/I] have something to live for: any single one - or a combination - of those aforementioned.
I'm not sure if I've understood you correctly, because that seems like a trivial point. Apples can't be bananas and circles can't be squares.
My counterpoint would be that [i]seeking to attain[/I] happiness or pleasure can be [i]a[/I] purpose.
Quoting intrapersona
Why what isn't? You've switched from "can be/can't be" to "is/isn't". But anyway, the one isn't the other, just as an apple isn't a banana. I haven't denied that. That seems trivially true.
I'm not sure whether it is, in part, down to poor wording on your end, but I'm not seeing the presumed significance.
And no, I haven't [I]just[/I] told you that. I addressed your OP, as you encouraged me to do, and I have countered several of your points.
Quoting intrapersona
You made a false analogy, and I said as much. If your conclusion that it's absurd depends upon this false analogy, then that's good reason to reject your argument.
Can we drop this jargon of "extensions of human experience"? How about simply seeking pleasure or contentedness or happiness, for example? Why the heck would that be absurd? (And don't give me some rubbish about your pinky toe).
So you're a psychologist? And you've gathered all of that just from a few anonymous exchanges over the internet? With just some text and a picture of an owl?
Quoting intrapersona
Do philosophers resort to words like "completely ridiculous"? (You did so in the very next post). How about "downright foolish"? (That's another one of yours).
I might have been less aggressive if you had not have rudely patronised me in your reply. (I notice that you've done the same to others).
Those in glass houses...
Quoting intrapersona
What? Was that supposed to be an example of someone with nothing to live for who is coincidentally living a good life? I very much doubt that most Buddhist monks, most of the time, have nothing at all to live for. They meditate for a reason, don't they? Surely there is some purpose to all of that Buddhist stuff they do? Am I expected to believe that they have nothing to live for? Odd way of showing it. If one of 'em looks like they're about to jump off a bring, then maybe.
Ok, but that doesn't say anything about the purpose of life
I know exactly what you are talking about and think about it daily. This seems to enhance the questioning of what to live for though.
Imagine if you could be in line with state of living permanently? For everyday experience to take on a deeper meaning and connection to it? Life certainly would have more value and you would feel as if you had more of a purpose than you do now although you couldn't express what it was in any more detail than you can now.
It is like saying, I live for that small experience of spiritual insight that happens twice a year. It just makes it seem even more dull and purposeless tbh.
It is all easier said than done. The chaotic mind wants to stay chaotic. If you offer it peace it will decline (the reason why meditation still isn't very popular at all in the world).
People are to immersed in objective reality, thinking it is real and gives substance to their existence to actual engage in any solemn activities in quietude (including myself).
Yeah, unfortunately what happens then is that people mistake genuine spiritual practices with New Age woo woo so no one ends up looking in to spiritual or ascetic practices.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes but you can't go around making assumptions as if their truisms. I can't just talk to people as if the already believe that there is a red princess coming to great me after death. You must say "is clear, there might be none" or "is clear, it is assumed to be none by myself of course".
Quoting Punshhh
Just because an organism is at liberty to pursue a purpose doesn't mean that his life has a purpose. As we already established there are small purposes like tasks and their is a purpose for your life beyond doing the dishwasher and mowing the lawn.
Well it wasn't a purpose that I was given but which nature gave to me, I thought that was implicit in what I actually said before you quoted me out of context.
The purpose nature gives its animals are absurd. Eat, sleep, sex, die. Why? nature responds: "just cause... lol"
That is just saying our purpose is to going on towards going on towards going on at the same time caring for our biosphere.
Why are we here daddy? to survive of course. But why daddy? why to survive of course? but why daddy? why to survive of course... can you catch a snake before it eats its own tail?
There are small/weak purposes like instinct and mowing the lawn and then there are grandiose purpose like why humans even exist at all. It is absurd and foolish to claim small/weak purposes as grandiose ones (which is what my OP pointed out). Yet you are all seeming to disregard this.
It means I think the purpose of life is to learn to feel ever more subtly and deeply.
What is the purpose of life daddy? To learn to feel ever more subtly and deeply of course. But why daddy? Well because it enhances our lives. But why do that daddy? Because we live better lives. But why live better lives daddy? Because... it makes it more purposeful?
Does a better life make it more purposeful? Aren't you sort of ignoring what I said about how it is absurd and/or foolish to claim small/weak purposes as grandiose ones (which is what my OP pointed out).
Not trying to say you are a fool, just want to argue my point in the OP to see if it holds up to truth ;)
That fact seems to go in my favor, for if there is no one without a brain at all how can they say what it is like to not have a brain and be dead? Therefore, how can you claim what death is like? Which you seem to do.
If you dob't think there is debate about what consciousness is and if it is synonymous with brain states you can read this thread and if you are right you will find that everyone shares the same opinion to you, if you are wrong you will find that I am right in that there is a debate about such things. I just created it for you to blabber mouth your unvalidated opinion in :D http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/721/is-consciousness-created-in-the-brain
Quoting Harry Hindu
So did I actually claim there was a dragon did I? Looks like you misread just so you can have something to debate... sorry I mean ARGUE to me.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It lies on both of our shoulders if we want to assert anything beyond what we see in the physical world. Just because they don't come back doesn't mean they don't exist somewhere else, you can't claim that. All you can claim is that they are no longer in the physical world, whatever the physical world even fricken is! which you don't know either!
So you don't believe a more fulfilling life is better than a less fulfilling life?
Living a purposeful life may or may not be enriching depending on the choice of purposes.
So, a way of living is recommended not because it is "more purposeful" whatever that even means, but because it is more enriching.
You seem quite confused about the nature of purpose.
I didn't think we were questioning whether purpose is necessary or sufficient but whether it exists at all.
My statement was asking whether a good life=a purposeful life and if so how?
It is not a trivial point because if you ask anyone on the street what their purpose of life is they will claim it to be pleasure: my wife, my kids, food, enjoying my work, my hobbies etc. etc. etc.
Happiness can be a purpose as in it can be a goal but a goal is not the same thing as a life purpose. If I have a goal to peel 50,000 apples wouldn't it be ridiculous to claim it as the sole reason for my existence? Likewise it is ridiculous to claim the sole reason of your existence to seek happiness. There are small/weak purposes like instinct and mowing the lawn and then there are grandiose purpose like why humans even exist at all. It is absurd and foolish to claim small/weak purposes as grandiose ones (which is what my OP pointed out)
where did I say that? You keep talking as if you know what the purpose of life is, when quite clearly in the post YOU QUOTED ME ON I was saying that we haven't proved that yet.
Don't you remember?
"There are small/weak purposes like instinct and mowing the lawn and then there are grandiose purpose like why humans even exist at all. It is absurd and foolish to claim small/weak purposes as grandiose ones (which is what my OP pointed out)"
It is not a trivial point because if you ask anyone on the street what their purpose of life is they will claim it to be pleasure: my wife, my kids, food, enjoying my work, my hobbies etc. etc. etc.
Happiness can be a purpose as in it can be a goal but a goal is not the same thing as a life purpose. If I have a goal to peel 50,000 apples wouldn't it be ridiculous to claim it as the sole reason for my existence? Likewise it is ridiculous to claim the sole reason of your existence to seek happiness
Is "several" a hyperbole? because I only made 2 points in my OP and I don't ever remember being told how they were flawed in truth (of which I would like).
You claim it is false but don't provide any reasoning as to why.
It is not a trivial point because if you ask anyone on the street what their purpose of life is they will claim it to be pleasure: my wife, my kids, food, enjoying my work, my hobbies etc. etc. etc.
Happiness can be a purpose as in it can be a goal but a goal is not the same thing as a life purpose. If I have a goal to peel 50,000 apples wouldn't it be ridiculous to claim it as the sole reason for my existence? Likewise it is ridiculous to claim the sole reason of your existence to seek happiness. There are small/weak purposes like instinct and mowing the lawn and then there are grandiose purpose like why humans even exist at all. It is absurd and foolish to claim small/weak purposes as grandiose ones (which is what my OP pointed out) IE. "Why do humans live? To mow the lawn of course". "Why do humans live? To experience the biological reaction sadness of course" Why do humans live? To experience the biological reaction called happiness of course"
No.
Those in glass houses...
It is by NOT wanting to attain, achieve that they find their success, their "nirvana". It comes when they give up completely. They enter in to deep portions of the human psyche well beyond what you and I experience and are able to do things like set themselves on fire and not flinch a muscle.
I'm saying the very idea of purpose considers life unsatisfactory. The satisfied don't merely have no need to look for purpose, they don't live for a purpose at all. For them, there is just living.
To think in terms of living for a purpose is to consider life meaningless. As if life was nothing, with meaning only to be found in escaping it to some notion of purpose.
Why life? There is no reason or purpose to it. One just lives. No-one gets a choice in the matter. Life expresses meaning, whether it be the joy of fulfilment or the despair of the illusion of meaningless. It laughs in the face of purpose or reason, existing without then, despite their protests it's impossible.
The self-evident truth only asserts itself within the silent void that the truth determines everything including justifying itself because virtue is its own reward and wonder is the beginning of wisdom. Humor, beauty, love, and life must ultimately justify themselves if they are to be true.
So you say... yet by your own admission, a justification hasn't been found and is, by the plurality of truths of the living, impossible. (e.g it makes no more sense to say I live for happiness than it does my little toe).
And the world remains full of humour, beauty, love and life anyway.
The idea they must be justified is a self-flagellating illusion, an instance where our own minds take us to deny ourselves and the world around us.
Yes, I know, but this is the best we can do in the absence of the knowledge of the purposes of the agency, or process resulting in the existence of the existence we find ourselves in. Remember my second category of purpose?
yes, this is what I was pointing out in my post when I categorised purpose into two kinds. This is the second category, as I wrote it;
"The purpose of agents responsible for the existence of the existence we find ourselves in."
But you are conflating the two categories which results in the confusion. As I said, in order to consider the purpose of the agency, or process resulting in the existence of the existence we find ourselves in, we can only coherently address it in reference to that agency, or process. But unfortunately we can't do this because we are in ignorance of what, or who it is. End of story.
This philosophical problem is why ideas like God and spirituality were thought of in the first place.
"The illusion of agency" is an unwarranted assumption. Determinism hasn't been proved to be the case, it is merely speculation.
The distinct classification of purposes is due to a distinct classification of agencies. For it is agency which generates purpose. Without agency there cannot be purpose, it is meaningless. Unless you include within the bounds of purpose the physical processes of matter, carrying out their own purposes.
So, do you agree that purpose is generated by agency and that there is no purpose in the absence of agency?
There is no "if" about it. There are known medical cases of hydranencephaly. Most of the brain never forms and 90% of babies self-abort when this is the case. If they make it out of the womb they die within a few years even with all the help and medical support they get and is required just to keep them alive that long. So imagine what it would be like if they didn't have any brain at all.
Quoting intrapersonaLOL. You're giving me a link to a philosophy thread. How about a link to a scientific thread that shows that it is still under debate. Your pathetic attempts at insulting me just show me that I'm wasting my time with a loser. The list of reasonable people on these forums is shrinking.Quoting intrapersona
Yep. I'm wasting my time.
Wrong, by my admission they justify themselves. Other than using analogies, I can no more explain how they justify themselves then I can explain color to a blind man. But I can assert that those who claim they don't justify themselves are living in denial and use a pragmatic approach to prove the point.
Look, I wanted to rule out one possible interpretation: that you were just saying that the one isn't the same thing as the other. [I]That[/I] is what I said would be trivial, and not any other interpretation. So don't misapply my criticism.
If, on the other hand, that's not what you meant, then it seems we're back to square one.
Quoting intrapersona
Isn't appealing to ridiculousness much like appealing to silliness? Is it only wrong when I do it?
I agree, they don't convey the same meaning. But it can be a life purpose nevertheless, so that doesn't mean a thing. And speaking of "the sole reason for one's existence" doesn't address anything that I've said, since, I don't know about you, but I've just been talking about a life purpose - which can be or comprise multiple things, as opposed to one single thing. There's no need to narrow it down like that - although that [i]would[/I] seem to be more convenient for your position, so I'd get why you might want to attack that instead.
Quoting intrapersona
But that's not [i]my[/I] claim. [I]My[/I] claim doesn't say anything about "the sole reason of my existence". Why should I care about this other claim that you're attacking?
It isn't ridiculous at all to say that one of the things that I live for is to seek out and attain happiness. What's ridiculous is to say that that's absurd. And even more so if it is based on a comparison with your pinky toe.
Quoting intrapersona
That particular example about mowing the lawn does seem rather absurd to me, but then I don't value mowing the lawn in anywhere near the same way that I value the things that I live for. For someone else who really values gardening, it might well be different.
You could take any one specific and seemingly insignificant example in isolation and say the same thing, but that wouldn't prove anything. Even if you call it "ridiculous", " absurd", or "foolish". For me, it's more of a collective thing, and it's about what I get out of it, not how others judge it.
The greater purpose is the reason [i]why[/I] I seek out these activities. It really doesn't matter if you call them something else, like goals, or if you think that it's foolish or ridiculous, or if you bring up instinct, which is irrelevant. I am not a purely instinctual being, and, unlike other beings, I am capable of rational thought. That means that I could reason to go against my instincts, and stop seeking these things out, or to even go as far as suicide. But I haven't done so, for good reason. If I had no good reason, then things would be very different. I might not even be here right now. But I [i]do[/I] have something to live for, so I live.
Quoting intrapersona
No, it's not, and you definitely made more points than that - even if you single out just two of them as the main ones. And you must have poor memory or something. Bit odd how you mention some of the reasons that I've told you, yet you claim not to remember what they are. Wanting more details is not the same thing.
Quoting intrapersona
Because they are nothing alike - and don't take that literally. There's a reason why virtually no one lives for their or your pinky toe, and innumerable people live to attain happiness. They obviously have some different qualities, and we obviously find those of happiness considerably more appealing, valuable, or worthwhile than those of our respective pinky toes or of your pinky toe.
And, by the way, if you just copy and past portions of your previous posts in response to something I've said, I'll simply disregard it. So it's not worth the bother. You really should stop doing that. It doesn't reflect well on you. You should be charitable enough to assume that we've read and understood it the first time, and don't need it simply copy and pasted. Try to reiterate or explain rather than simply repeat.
They don't live for any reason at all? Yeah right. Like I said, they have an odd way of showing it. Sometimes actions speak louder than words. And I already gave the example of suicidal actions as an exception.
Quoting intrapersona
They seek nirvana, at least initially - whether they convince themselves that they want it or not. You can't do that if you're dead. So you must live for at least that reason if you have any chance of doing what you set out to do.
No one sets themselves on fire for no reason. And that doesn't sound like the good life to me. Nor does a sort of comatose-like state. So, what's your point?
Vanity is excessive pride. What's excessive about it?
Now we've gone around in a circle.
Quoting intrapersona
There's no such thing as objective achievement?
Well, one can still strive for subjective achievement.
Quoting intrapersona
It's hard to know how I would feel in such a circumstance because I've never been in one but it's possible that I feel neither happy nor sad ( about that particular thing). And I could still compare myself to a previous state.
If there is still experiences after "death" then there was no death. You are still alive and having experiences. How would you even know you "died"? What would death mean if you continue to exist? What use would a body have?
You see, this is typical of philosophy - of creating problems by the simple misuse of terms. If you continue to have experiences then you are still alive, not dead, and that is what I'm talking about being interesting as opposed to experiencing nothing. Never mind that you'd need to explain how you would continue having experiences after you don't have any senses or a brain. Your argument is simply based on a misuse of terms to the point that you obliterate any meaning the word, "death" has.
No, that's not part of my body. It's not the same material, either, but that wouldn't matter. My neighbor's fence and the Eiffel Tower aren't a part of each other even though they're both wrought iron.
Quoting intrapersona
I understand that's your view, but it's not a view I at all agree with.
I disagree because (a) I dont see why control should be the demarcation criterion, (b) I think that "control" is rather ambiguous anyway (and for example with respect to free will, I believe that at best we'd be probabilistically exploiting randomness), and (c) I'd say that my brain is me; I'm not something separate from my physical body in any manner.
Quoting intrapersona
Yes, quite. Which isn't to say I've done none of the things you mention, and obviously I'm quite interested in philosophy, but my motivation for any of that stuff isn't dissatisfaction with the world, myself, my place in the world, etc.
Quoting intrapersona
This is more of an aside, but I dislike the word "absurd" in this context. I prefer to use "absurd" in (a) the sense it's used in the arts a la "absurdist comedy," which is a way of emphasizing a departure from a realist approach--Monty Python's Flying Circus is a fine example of absurdist comedy, and (b) in the more general sense out "outlandish" or "ridiculous." I'm a huge fan of absurdism in the arts.
At any rate, yes, re the drier philosophical definition, where it's basically asserting antirealism with respect to "meaning," "purpose," etc., I'm definitely denying that there is any "ultimate purpose." Any purpose anyone has is a purpose they create for themselves.
Re proof, empirical claims are not provable period. But the reason to believe that there's no objective purpose is both (1) a functional analysis of what people are referring to (so, behaviorally basically) with purpose talk, and (2) the complete absence of evidence for anything that could amount to objective purpose.
Quoting intrapersona
We can't know what anyone else's mental content (if any) is for certain from third-person observations because mental cotent only manifests as such from a first-person perspective. Behavioral indicators are certainly reasons to believe that others experience particular mental content, and the fact that others possess brains similar to our own, which we can third-person observe in similar states to our own, is also a reason to believe that others have similar mental states to our own. At that, however, there is less reason to believe that others experience similar mental states as their brains more strongly differ from our own, and there's a danger of anthropomorphizing when it comes to other animals and other things. Still, I think there are good reasons to believe that many non-human animals experience mental states such as fear.
Ok, I say that I was conflating the two categories now. Thanks
Quoting Punshhh
I wouldn't call the libet experiment "speculation". It indicates our actions are driven by unconscious decisions and that we percieve them as conscious by mistake.
There could be purpose both ways. If it was created by agency then it would be akin to what willowofdarkness says "To think in terms of living for a purpose is to consider life meaningless. As if life was nothing, with meaning only to be found in escaping it to some notion of purpose."
By agency I mean a self organising system which develops a complex strategic action as a response to the environment. A more sophisticated kind of agency can be seen in humans. For example, humans used intellection to develop computation and robotics. So at some point in the future AI will imerge and will have been created/generated solely by human agency.
It is true that one can live a fulfilling life without any awareness of a purpose. But this does not mean that there is no purpose in our existence. But as I said, I don't think we can know the purpose in the absence of a knowledge of the purposes entertained by the agency which brought us into existence to begin with. For example God, or an advanced alien. Although, I think we can conclude that whatever that purpose was/is, our presence is required for it to be carried out. So we can perhaps come up with a few initial thoughts about what that purpose maybe in terms of a general perspective.
Right, but this isn't OUR agency. It is the agency of something of which we have no control over and are not a part of (the unconscious brain). We are separate from it even though we share the same house.
Quoting Punshhh
I would call that autonomy, not agency. Agency implies careful deliberation, decision making, conscious choices etc.
Quoting Punshhh
So are you talking about my fathers desire to ejaculate inside my mother? As that would be the purpose of the agent (my father) who chose to bring me in to existence.
Or do you refer to all life when you say "US" as in "god was the agent who brought us in to existence".
Oh no, now I see it was the latter. But I have seen many people reject this notion in favor that there is no agency that brought us in, it was just a fluke of nature. single celled organism evolved after lightning struck certain chemicals in the atmosphere and we are now just an absurd, random nothing with no rhyme or reason. How do incorporate purpose then? It would seem to go back to what willowofdarkness said: "To think in terms of living for a purpose is to consider life meaningless. As if life was nothing, with meaning only to be found in escaping it to some notion of purpose."
But my point is that one is at liberty to programme/condition ones unconscious mind to the extent that one is able to act as a strategic agent. Also your point about our unconscious mind having predetermined what we are going to do etc, is only an observation of how our momentary responses work. Agency over longer time periods works out regardless. For example in my own life, I contemplated for many years what my ideal career path was, I consciously chose what that path would be and have now acted on that choice. As such I am in entirely different circumstances, doing something different to what I would have been doing if I had remained in the demographic etc that I was born into.
It is rudimentary agency I know, but it is deliberated and decisions are made, although there isn't conscious choice. The organelles within the cells are complex computational devices which develop, test and refine responses to environmental conditions.
Im not sure that there was a lot of purpose there, more like desire, attraction etc. This goes back to my point about cellular life though. The purpose in your fathers action was biologically determined and driven by his cellular life.
Yes, I did, I but I did state that it might be a process and not God, or an intelligent alien.
Yes it might well be a purposeless process which brought us into existence. But logically we can have no idea if this could be the case. Empirically based scientific enquiry cannot even address the question about our origin. Nothing we can rationally come up with can help us out on this score, because in either case(with, or without agency), what we encounter on the ground would be identical(i.e. the world we find ourselves in) and the alternative might be absolutely imposssible. We are blind.
If there is no purpose, then we can't obviously incorporate one. Unless we accept that we might be mistaken and incorporate one anyway, which many people, do anyway. Personally I leave the question open, while maintaining a heathy contemplation and intuition on what the purpose is if there is one.
There is another angle though and that is that we decide to trust nature and that nature is not somehow deceiving us. If we trust nature in this way, we can consider that all the information about our origin is somehow expressed, coded in nature, naturally. So an intuitive reading of nature might give us the answer. I do this to the capacity that I can and I have determined that there is agency present and active in nature before our eyes, so there might be grander forms of agency beyond our current level of perception. So on balance if one is looking to nature for guidance, I do consider that there is a such a purpose.
Also I already addressed the point made by Willow.