My shot at the popular "meaning of life" topic

absoluteaspiration

From what I can see, it depends. Different people seem to be operating with different definitions of words like "life", so my philosophy of "life" would change depending on who I'm talking to. For example, for some people, "life" is all about the dialectics of desire and temptation. For them, my philosophy of "life" goes like this: Choose the lotus-bearing mud over its ephemeral blossom. The beautiful lotus is born from the repulsive mud. But when you have to choose, always choose the ability to create X over X itself. I admit the analogy is imperfect, since mud alone cannot produce lotuses without seeds which come from lotuses, but this is a traditional example in Sanskrit-language philosophy.

For a lot of people on the internet, "life" seems to revolve around society and politics. For those people, I'm a liberal, but I'm not a bleeding heart liberal. This is not to say I'm a psychopathic liberal like de Sade either. (Seriously, who hurt that guy?) However, I'm not a liberal primarily for moral reasons. I'm a liberal because if society is not a level playing field, then my victories and defeats would ring hollow to me. If I'm not invested in what I'm doing, then my skills will atrophy. A game only becomes interesting if its rules are fair, and liberalism shows us how to create a fair society.

If I find a more compelling account of fairness than the one offered by liberalism, then I will leave liberalism behind. So I guess my politics is essentially about fairness and only contingently about the liberal ideology in particular. Having said that, no ideology other than liberalism seems seriously interested in developing an account of fairness at this point in time, leaving me with zero alternatives.

Everyone else seems interested in preserving cultures and empowering the working class. My problem with these goals is that I don't believe it is possible to attain them. I have an argument that fairness is different in that regard: All knowledge comes from evaluating competing theories fairly and in proportion to the evidence supporting them. Even knowledge of the skills of different individuals belongs to the same category of knowledge. In that sense, all knowledge comes from fairness. If fairness is impossible, then knowledge as such is impossible. In that case, it is impossible to know that fairness is impossible. Therefore, insofar as any truth is knowable, fairness is a necessary truth. I want to live in a society which honors this principle instead of the random accidents of culture.

TheMadFool

I don't get it.

What is the meaning of life?

BC

Everyone else seems interested in preserving cultures and empowering the working class. — absoluteaspiration

My problem with these goals is that I don't believe it is possible to attain them. — absoluteaspiration

And just why the hell not?

absoluteaspiration

↪TheMadFool

Regarding life as such, I don't believe in the existence of such a thing:

1. Science no longer believes in vital principles or vital energies. Therefore, that kind of life doesn't exist.

2. As for life in the sense of "everything", I believe in the Godelian chain of argumentation that there is no universal set. So life in the sense of totality doesn't exist either.

This is why I think that word should be analyzed into the distinct entities referred to as "life". I tried to answer the question in the case of two popular definitions of "life" I see floating around.

BC

All knowledge comes from evaluating competing theories fairly and in proportion to the evidence supporting them. — absoluteaspiration

All knowledge? What about experience? You seem to have a lot of faith in this process of evaluating competing theories.

Even knowledge of the skills of different individuals belongs to the same category of knowledge. In that sense, all knowledge comes from fairness. If fairness is impossible, then knowledge as such is impossible. — absoluteaspiration

That statement does not make sense. [/quote]

absoluteaspiration

↪Bitter Crank

I don't believe that it is possible to preserve culture because culture doesn't exist in a vacuum. Cultures are necessarily in a state of competition. Ways of life that outperform others will filter into less active societies as we've seen throughout history.

It is not possible to empower the working class for the following reason: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/economics/#5.2

BC

It is not possible to empower the working class for the following reason: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/economics/#5.2 — absoluteaspiration

Linking me to a long article in the SEP is no kind of answer. You sent me to read what somebody else thinks. I want to hear from you, here, what YOU think.

I don't believe that it is possible to preserve culture because culture doesn't exist in a vacuum. Cultures are necessarily in a state of competition. Ways of life that outperform others will filter into less active societies as we've seen throughout history. — absoluteaspiration

Of course culture doesn't exist in a vacuum. I understand that when cultures are brought into contact, they will interpenetrate each other, and this is likely to change both of them. The culture of black slaves was in no position to compete with the American Master Class. None-the-less, black culture penetrated white culture (and visa versa) producing a new culture which neither antecedents had 200 years ago. It was less cultural competition and more cultural intercourse (in the fucking sense of the word).

absoluteaspiration

↪Bitter Crank

It is not a matter of faith. As I have explained, fair evaluation is a presupposition in our use of the word "knowledge". When we call something "knowledge", we are thereby insisting that it can pass a test of fair evaluation under ideal conditions.

I don't think experience as such is knowledge. Experience enters into knowledge when it is organized into proportional tables that can pass tests of fair evaluation:

1. Suppose you feel that X is the case. This by itself does not constitute knowledge that X is the case. I think we can all agree on this much. If that were not true, then everything I said would constitute knowledge because I felt that everything I said is true.

2. But suppose you feel pain. Does that constitute knowledge that you feel pain? I would argue that only to the extent that it is represented in the tables I mentioned above. Suppose a little kid says, "Ow, that hurt!" and an older kid tells him, "That's not real pain. Wait till you go through XYZ." I think there is an element of truth to that answer when interpreted literally, and here's why:

The little kid's experience counts as knowledge insofar as it is represented in a table of his past experiences. The older kid's answer says that once more experience has been accumulated, the past experience will be dwarfed to such an extent that it will no longer pass a fair test asking the question, "Is this experience really pain?" In this way, both sentences carry a degree of contextual accuracy.

As for the argument I gave, it makes perfect sense to me. Perhaps it would be helpful to point out specific objections, since the "doesn't make sense" line can be applied to literally any argument. For example: "Calling experience knowledge doesn't make sense" is not a proper counterargument to your claim, etc.

absoluteaspiration

↪Bitter Crank

There is a formal argument that collective decision making as such is impossible. I linked you to a page explaining why. I suggest you go through it. As for cultures, I explained the reason why I think it is not possible to preserve holistic ways of life with the full signification that they carried in the past. As a liberal, albeit an immoral one, I am not in favor of forcibly wiping out cultures either, so I don't understand the argumentative relevance of your example.

(Edit: For example, you can force the members of your society to outwardly conform to certain modes of your conduct, but even then, what you will miss is the element of spontaneous self-expression that those actions stood for in the past. The same actions that once represented freedom will now be an expression of arbitrary tyranny. What is the proof of this? Simply that in the past, people naturally acted in ways that you now require an totalitarian police state to enforce. Without totalitarianism, people would no longer act in those ways.

Since you are powerless to force people to naturally act in the ways you want them to, you will necessarily lose the signification that actions stand for even as you play the puppet master and force others to dance to your tune like marionettes. This is why naturally experienced cultural signification is impossible to save for posterity. The past is a foreign country, and it must necessarily be one.)

(Edit: This may not be clear from what I said above, but when I say I am a "liberal", what I mean is that I want citizens to have equal opportunities in all respects that are unrelated to skill. This necessarily involves wealth redistribution, since a certain level of poverty takes away such opportunities, and so on. The purpose of this plan is to make citizens responsible for their own successes and failures, and that is the meaning of freedom.)

BC

The past is a foreign country, and it must necessarily be one. — absoluteaspiration

That's a great quote, but I don't think it is true. "The past isn't even past." Faulkner said. The past doesn't break off and float away like that. Every generation bridges the gap between the last, the present, and the next generation, and across that bridge travel cultural meanings (carried by people) which give us continuity over time. Larger historic episodes are also bridged, and maintain continuity, The Feudal era was bridged to the capitalist era, and in time the capitalist era will be bridged to whatever the post-capitalism era is called.

I'm not sure what you mean in the (Edit: ... paragraph above.

The example I gave was to show that cultures don't just compete and dominate. Despite themselves, they end up collaborating and making a new culture out of the two preceding ones.

absoluteaspiration

↪Bitter Crank

I think you are forgetting the context of the discussion, which is preserving ways of life. In that context, the past is very much a foreign country. Of course the past influences the present (though in an ambiguous way, as I would argue elsewhere), but you cannot use that fact, which is admitted by every sane person, to preserve ways of life as they existed in the past.

Ciceronianus

The problem lies in assuming that a question is being posed. It's actually an assertion. It's not "what is the meaning of life?" It's:

"The meaning of life is....WHAT???"

absoluteaspiration

↪Ciceronianus the White

This is going to sound strange, but I believe that the only difference between a question and an assertion is a sense of dissatisfaction that is produced in the former case. This is my take on the fact that if an answer is analytically derivable from a problem statement, then it is surprisingly difficult to distinguish the answer from the problem itself. Every question is an answer if you are satisfied with it, and every answer is a question if you are not.

Wherever I say "satisfaction", I am actually using the formalizable concept of type checking. When you call something a question, you are saying that's not the type of thing you are looking for. When you call something an answer, that thing passes your quality controls, whatever those might be. This is why a lot of the, "The answer is that the world is a question." theories are actually category errors. It is possible for a question to be an answer, but only in the context of a type hierarchy.

What I mean by this is that a question can be an answer when the type of thing that passes your quality controls produces a dissatisfaction in a way that is unrelated to the evaluation you are currently undertaking in a self-referential way. There are at least two levels here: At level 1, there is a thing X that produces dissatisfaction in process of evaluation P. At level 2, there is a distinct process of evaluation Q that is satisfied with X in case it fails for P. In that case, X is a question for P and an answer for Q. Confusing P with Q leads to the class of category errors where one thing is simultaneously a question and an answer for the same process of evaluation.

Having said that, quality controls are relative to the agents undertaking processes of evaluation. For example, there is nothing inherently wrong with an agent which is satisfied with an answer like, "The meaning of life is, 'the meaning of life'." Such an agent produces no dissatisfaction when presented with the phrase "the meaning of life". For it, "the meaning of life" is an answer in the same way as 2+2=4. Whether such an agent is suitable for any of your purposes is a different question.

Nils Loc

always choose the ability to create X over X itself

Do the ends justify the means?

TheMadFool

1. Science no longer believes in vital principles or vital energies. Therefore, that kind of life doesn't exist. — absoluteaspiration

Science is not the ''soul'' authority on truth.

2. As for life in the sense of "everything", I believe in the Godelian chain of argumentation that there is no universal set. So life in the sense of totality doesn't exist either. — absoluteaspiration

But the set of all living things is not a living thing. So, if you talk of the universal set, you wouldn't be talking about ''life''. Let's talk of the subset of the universal set - living things.

absoluteaspiration

↪Nils Loc

I worded that in a very specific way: "But when you have to choose..." If you must choose between enjoying yourself and storing up the means to enjoy yourself, then as a rule of thumb, it is better to go with the latter lest you run out of resources. But whenever possible, it is better to do both.

absoluteaspiration

Science is not the ''soul'' authority on truth. — TheMadFool

Maybe not, but the argument from science is at least one rational argument. Where is the argument that life exists?

But the set of all living things is not a living thing. So, if you talk of the universal set, you wouldn't be talking about ''life''. Let's talk of the subset of the universal set - living things. — TheMadFool

Maybe I was unclear about what I was doing. I have already addressed that sense of life in point 1. Some people use life to mean "everything". This other definition of life is addressed in point 2.

This whole approach of distinguishing between definitions and addressing them separately is my meta-solution to the meaning of life. All that desire and politics stuff were examples of how such an approach might play out in practice.

absoluteaspiration

↪TheMadFool

Wait a minute, when you say "meaning of life", are you referring to life in the biological sense? The biological definition of life involves passing down genetic traits through reproduction. I must say, calling that the "meaning of life" is a bit cruelly reductive even for me.

Ciceronianus

↪absoluteaspiration

Well, I was being silly, you know. No serious assertion, or for that matter question, was intended.

But it strikes me that if one is "satisfied" with a question, there's no question to begin with. That may imply an assertion which isn't expressly made, but most of all it indicates no serious thinking is taking place. There's no question to answer; we're pretending there is one. There's nothing at stake, nothing which needs to be resolved.

Big John Dewey claimed that we only really think when confronted with a problem. I tend to agree. When we're satisfied, there's no problem--there's no need, no discomfort, no uncertainty, no desire to change circumstances-- and we don't think.

absoluteaspiration

↪Ciceronianus the White

By the same standards using which you are evaluating whether it is a question or an answer, that is true. However, it is still possible for the same thing to be a question by one set of standards and an answer by another. That's what I was trying to explain.

TheMadFool

Where is the argument that life exists? — absoluteaspiration

Interesting question. In my humble opinion, Life is a definition and can't be argued unto. You can challenge the definition though.

Some people use life to mean "everything". This other definition of life is addressed in point 2. — absoluteaspiration

Your definition of life is different. Please clarify it further.

absoluteaspiration

In my humble opinion, Life is a definition and can't be argued unto. — TheMadFool

Having a definition of "unicorn" doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to argue for their existence. Why should it be different for life?

Your definition of life is different. Please clarify it further. — TheMadFool

I have already given several definitions of life including vitality, totality and biological life. What is your definition of life?

TheMadFool

Having a definition of "unicorn" doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to argue for their existence. Why should it be different for life? — absoluteaspiration

Ok. The way it works is like this:

First we define a word (in this case ''life''). Then we see which entities fit the definition. If a certain object qualifies we put it in the class denoted by the word (in this case the class of living things). We don't argue a definition.

However, we may argue over whether an object fits the definition or not. Even so, the issue must rest on the quality of the definition itself.

What is your definition of life? — absoluteaspiration

The biological definition of life - nutrition, growth, reproduction, irritability, etc. very basic.

absoluteaspiration

The biological definition of life - nutrition, growth, reproduction, irritability, etc. very basic. — TheMadFool

Let me get this straight: When you are asking me for the "meaning of life", you want to know what biological life means? I don't think that is at all the usual sense in which most people use the phrase "meaning of life". I think most people use it in senses like: what it all means (totality), what is the meaning of spontaneity (vitality), and so on.

I don't think you want to speculate on what biological life means. The world of biology is a cruel place. Biologically, life means eat or be eaten, grow your raw power to levels that outstrip the competition, find the healthiest mate and pump out lots of babies every season: http://ia902506.us.archive.org/25/items/shortpoetry132_1406_librivox/spc132_ishallforgetyoupresently_ss_128kb.mp3 Because that is what the existence of your species depends on and what you have been selected for. If you don't, then your life is a failure as far as the interests of biology proper extend.

That's the meaning of life, biologically speaking. It's like you're a character in an RPG. Not what anyone is asking for.

TheMadFool

↪absoluteaspiration

Sorry, should've been clearer. We had to start somewhere. You denied existence of life. I was showing that life does exist.

Yes the biological definition I gave isn't one that'll satisfy everyone. However, scientifically, that is the correct definition. Forget that for the moment. It seems you're looking for a meaning re how we define human life. That's ok by me. So, what is this meaning of life you have?

absoluteaspiration

↪TheMadFool

Look, take the word "dragon". By itself, it's just a word that can be used to refer to phenomena as diverse as fire-breathing dragons, Komodo dragons and leafy seadragons. Now suppose I were to argue that because Komodo dragons and leafy seadragons exist, we know that "dragons" exist. Now that we have established that "dragons" exist, fire-breathing dragons must also exist. This example clearly exposes the structure of the fallacy. Whether "dragons" exist or not depends entirely on the kind of "dragons" we're talking about. Komodo dragons and leafy seadragons exist, but fire-breathing dragons do not. Similarly, biological life exists, but vitalistic life and life as totality do not.

On that basis, what I'm saying is that whether life exists or not depends completely on the definition you attach to the word "life", which by itself, is just a word. In accordance with your chosen definition, "the meaning of life" also changes. Biological life exists, but it does not lead to a "meaning of life" of the kind that we are talking about. If you do pick a "meaning of life" of the kind that we are talking about, then you are left with definitions of life like vitality or totality. But if you pick those definitions, then life does not exist. The existence of biological life is completely irrelevant to the existence of vitality or totality. I don't know how much more clearly I can put it.

(Try reading my first post again in that context. See if that makes more sense. There, I present two example meanings of life using two distinct definitions of "life" that I see being commonly used.)

TheMadFool

Biological life exists, but it does not lead to a "meaning of life" of the kind that we are looking for. If you do pick a "meaning of life" of the kind that we are looking for, — absoluteaspiration

Ok. I agree biological life isn't a good place to start for the kind of meaning that'll satisfy man. The meaning of life is ''survival of the fittest'' is too drab and boring.

you are left with definitions of life like vitality or totality. But if you pick those definitions, then life does not exist. — absoluteaspiration

You reject ''vitality'' (I assume you mean something nonmaterial) on scientific grounds. I think it's naive to assign a 100% credibility to science (even science doesn't claim absolute knowledge). There's enough room in science to accommodate a nonmaterialistic theory or two.

Secondly, using mathematical tools to reject, as you put it, the universal set is a misapplication of math. To talk of ALL life makes complete sense. There's no contradiction. So, I don't accept your view on the matter.

absoluteaspiration

I think it's naive to assign a 100% credibility to science (even science doesn't claim absolute knowledge). — TheMadFool

As I have already explained, your claim that I am assigning 100% credibility to science is a false statement. I am not assigning 100% credibility to science. I am simply using the argument from science as one rational argument for the nonexistence of vitalism, which is a fair move. After presenting an argument for the nonexistence of vitalism, I await an argument from your side that seeks to rationally establish the existence of vitalism, contrary to the argument I have presented for its nonexistence.

Secondly, using mathematical tools to reject, as you put it, the universal set is a misapplication of math. — TheMadFool

I do not think it is a misapplication of math for the following reason: We study the properties of objects using logic, and logic is a field of math. Just as there is no total object in math, there is no total object in logic either. We cannot discuss the meaning of totality as such if we cannot enumerate its properties by means of logic.

Now perhaps you do not mean totality as such but the totality of something called "life". This brings us back to square one: What do you mean by "life"? On the basis of two reasonable interpretations of that word, I have presented two meanings of life in my first post.

But suppose you don't want my arbitrary interpretations. What you want is the meaning of life in the sense of "life, the universe, and everything". That sense of "life" is identical to logical totality as such, and for the above reasons, it doesn't exist.

My shot at the popular "meaning of life" topic

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