Purpose is an intended outcome. Asking for the "purpose" of life is asking for the outcome that the existence of life is intended to achieve. That requires that someone or something with intentions created and/or is using life to achieve that outcome, e.g. one or more gods perhaps.

Personally, I'd prefer it if my life wasn't being used by someone or something else as pawn in whatever game they're playing. I decide for myself what to do with my time here. — Michael

Your preference then is that you have a preference, which is no more or less difficult to acheive whether you accept a teleological model or a causal one.

That is, the flip side of the coin of "asking for the "purpose" of life is asking for the outcome that the existence of life is intended to achieve" is "asking for the "cause" of life is asking for the origin that the existence of life is supposed to have originated from."

The reason it might matter to know the origin under a causal model is to know where you're going to end up given the chain of causes that will follow, just as we might want to know our final destination so that we can know what events will lead up to the final teleos under a teleological model.

In either event the determinism or fatalism is disrupted by free will. So, what you want is preference (i.e. free will), regardless of whether our existence is owed to random causes or a purposeful god.

We're passengers and crew on a great, ancient ship tossed about in an endless storm. — 180 Proof

Yeah, but you don't ask how we got upon the ship. It's a reasonable question with no reasonable answer. Either it's not just an ancient ship, but an eternal one, or else some fucker put us here. So, pick your poison: you believe in eternal ships tossing about at sea that never got here but were always here or you believe in a shipbuilder.

What matters most, it seems to me, is deciding how we choose to spend whatever time we have. — 180 Proof

Yep, and we choose to spend it right here.

That is, the flip side of the coin of "asking for the "purpose" of life is asking for the outcome that the existence of life is intended to achieve" is "asking for the "cause" of life is asking for the origin that the existence of life is supposed to have originated from." — Hanover

“Cause” and “purpose” mean different things. There must be a cause but there might not be a purpose.

There must be a cause but there might not be a purpose. — Michael

There's always a purpose. Be it simple, as a mental invalid wishing to express whatever their decrepit brain desires, or not. I feel you mean, there's not always a "goal" or aspect and dynamic of "intelligent reasoning" that can distinguish between past (knowledge), present (circumstance), and outcome (vision). Perhaps that's what you mean. :smile:

“Cause” and “purpose” mean different things. There must be a cause but there might not be a purpose. — Michael

I think that crystalizes the position well, but problems remain:

It doesn't remedy your problem of wanting control over your life because that would require something interfering with the causal chain.

It eliminates any way to explain the origin of the matter that existed at the time of the Big Bang because "origin" references a first cause which cannot be if "there must be a cause" for everything.

And, probably most importantly, your comment is a statement of a worldview, which might just be a foundational disagreement. I think many do believe the opposite, as in "There must be a purpose, but there might not be a cause." This is consistent with a theological position, arguing from positions of eternity, creation ex nihlio, and ultimate purpose.

There's always a purpose. Be it simple, as a mental invalid wishing to express whatever their decrepit brain desires, or not. I feel you mean, there's not always a "goal" or aspect and dynamic of "intelligent reasoning" that can distinguish between past (knowledge), present (circumstance), and outcome (vision). Perhaps that's what you mean. — Outlander

In context the phrase “the purpose of life” doesn’t mean “what I want to do with my life”.

It’s implicitly “the purpose of all human life”, and suggests that humanity exists to achieve the intended outcome of some “higher” power, whether that power be Yahweh, the Hindu pantheon, or the Engineers from the Prometheus movie.

And, probably most importantly, your comment is a statement of a worldview, which might just be a foundational disagreement. I think many do believe the opposite, as in "There must be a purpose, but there might not be a cause." This is consistent with a theological position, arguing from positions of eternity, creation ex nihlio, and ultimate purpose. — Hanover

I was really just referring to cause and purpose in the context of human life. Humans haven’t always existed, and nor did we spontaneously and without cause come into existence at some point in the past.

My point is just that there is a semantic difference between the phrases “the origin of human life” and “the purpose of human life”. The former refers to the manner in which human life came into existence (and there must be an explanation of some kind) and the latter refers to the outcome that human life is intended to achieve (and there might not be such a thing).

What matters most, it seems to me, is deciding how we choose to spend whatever time we have.
— 180 Proof

Yep, and we choose to spend it right here. — Hanover

:up:

Yeah, but you don't ask how we got upon the ship.

That'd be an idle question – the existential fact remains: we're (stranded) on a storm-tossed ship indefinitely

Or maybe just once. Perhaps the universe ends and nothing comes about ever again.

I won't be there to see it.

suggests that humanity exists to achieve the intended outcome of some “higher” power — Michael

To a simple, non-eternal being, perhaps it does suggest that. What of it, though?

You can think that way if you'd like, or perhaps you could think another way and that might be fine, too.

To give you a straight answer, I am trying to re-frame your common sense observation under an alternate light that perhaps we as mortal beings are simply incapable of understanding life and eternity or what have you and so manifest this inability in various forms, particularly stories, faiths, religions, and the like.

Or at the very least, that we have yet to reach such understanding as a species. Of course, the alternate "being incapable" is quite possible as well.

There does seem to be a clear theistic and non-theistic divide as far as this question is not only answered but processed. Which makes sense. Did we just evolve because after billions of years that's just what happened to have happened? Sure, that's plausible, I suppose. Not much evidence to the contrary. In my opinion, that would, unfortunately, seem to glorify war, violence, theft and everything we generally wish to avoid happening to us and those we care about as not just something people do but must do. That doesn't sit right with me, so I choose to believe something else.

There are many alternative possibilities as well. Perhaps we were made by a being that no longer exists. Perhaps we succeeded in our purpose, whatever it may have been, and now get to live unhindered by our past duties. It gets a bit hard to keep track of when you step over the logical edge like that and like most religions require, of course so generally isn't very productive in traditional philosophy.

Would you agree that if it were an absolute fact humanity simply evolved organically over millions of years, and the modern human is the most advanced and intelligent being in this and any universe, human life has in fact no real purpose? That is to say, no other purpose than that of a mosquito or a common cold germ? (That "purpose" being simply to propagate DNA)

It is correct. You cannot explain the meaning of life using thought and feeling. Otherwise, you need to explain it using thoughts and feelings to me. As I said, if there is such a thing as the meaning of life, then we are not able to experience it since we are not cognitively evolved well, similar to animals that didn't evolve in order to have thoughts, but feelings only. — MoK

It's not though, the meaning of life is both a thought and a feeling, that doesn't mean I can explain it as such. Plenty of books have also been written about the meaning of life so again you're just wrong.

Also it's not true the animals didn't evolve to have thoughts, plenty do. There is also nothing to suggest that the meaning of life is something we cannot experience because we are not cognitively evolved well.

The meaning of life is a human invention, nothing more. Hence why I said it's thoughts and feelings.

If so, then what else matters most? — 180 Proof

Nothing.

There are many alternative possibilities as well. Perhaps we were made by a being that no longer exists. Perhaps we succeeded in our purpose, whatever it may have been, and now get to live unhindered by our past duties. It gets a bit hard to keep track of when you step over the logical edge like that and like most religions require, of course so generally isn't very productive in traditional philosophy.

Would you agree that if it were an absolute fact humanity simply evolved organically over millions of years, and the modern human is the most advanced and intelligent being in this and any universe, human life has in fact no real purpose? That is to say, no other purpose than that of a mosquito or a common cold germ? (That "purpose" being simply to propagate DNA) — Outlander

It's not really a matter of that, there seems to be no purpose to life and as such we are able to make one. It looks to be that simple.

You're not really stepping over any logical edges with those "possibilities" (to be generous) since they end the same way, where we are now. That being there seems no purpose so we make one. Everything else you've said is mostly noise.

Being mortal doesn't really make one less capable of understanding life as being immortal, and whether we are able to or not remains to be seen. Maybe there is nothing to get after all, who really knows? Maybe it is just what one makes of it? Doesn't really seem to matter much which people go with.

:up: Nothing else besides ...

... deciding how we choose to spend whatever time we have. — 180 Proof

Would you agree that if it were an absolute fact humanity simply evolved organically over millions of years, and the modern human is the most advanced and intelligent being in this and any universe, human life has in fact no real purpose? — Outlander

Well, yes, that's what I've been saying from the start.

Given the definition of the word "purpose", to say that "human life has no purpose" is just to say that "nothing and nobody is using human life to achieve some intended outcome".

I was really just referring to cause and purpose in the context of human life. Humans haven’t always existed, and nor did we spontaneously and without cause come into existence at some point in the past. — Michael

This identifies the Principle of Sufficient Reason problem. We look for an explanation for everything in existence, and if we make an assertion that the thing always existed, then we're asserting it's just a brute fact (which is how some identify God). That is, if we say the universe has always existed, first consisting of primordial matter and later of more organized formations like humans, we are asserting a brute fact (the universe has just always been), but then you're disallowing that to apply to humans because you instinctively understand a human can't just suddenly occur from nowhere and that it cannot have always existed either. You are saying we need a sufficient reason to explain human existence but we don't need the same of the universe as a whole.

The problem is that what you say of humans in terms of that they must have come from something, you must also say of the universe. You can no more declare that humans are contingent upon causes due to something you identify as particular in humans that you are not also required to consistently apply to the universe wholly. If there is, you must identify what that is, but it cannot be the complexity of humans versus the complexity of the universe, as the laws of the universe as they must have existed in their primordial form arguably are significantly more complex than humans.

A way to resolve the PSR problem is to give a sufficient reason for the existence of humans and the universe, and there is nothing to require that the reason be a cause. The reason could be a purpose, meaning it makes as much sense logically to declare a first cause as the reason for our existence as it does a final purpose for our existence. That we have no way of knowing what the purpose is (or what the first cause was) is obvious, and both suffer an incoherence problem in trying to transcend the universe to explain the universe (i.e. looking for something outside the universe that caused the first cause or looking outside the universe for what gave the universe purpose). But these challenges are equal for either a teleological or a causal model.

A way to resolve the PSR problem is to give a sufficient reason for the existence of humans and the universe, and there is nothing to require that the reason be a cause. The reason could be a purpose — Hanover

This makes no sense.

"Humans exist because Martians intend to use us as food" is a non sequitur, whereas "humans exist because Martians created Adam and Eve in a lab and set them loose on Earth" isn't.

I think your reasoning stems from the fact that the word "reason" can be used to refer to both the "how" (e.g. "Martians created us in a lab") and the "why" (in the sense of motivation, e.g. "Martians intend to use us as food"), but to equate the two is to equivocate.

It's not though, the meaning of life is both a thought and a feeling, that doesn't mean I can explain it as such. Plenty of books have also been written about the meaning of life so again you're just wrong.

Also it's not true the animals didn't evolve to have thoughts, plenty do. There is also nothing to suggest that the meaning of life is something we cannot experience because we are not cognitively evolved well.

The meaning of life is a human invention, nothing more. Hence why I said it's thoughts and feelings. — Darkneos

I really don't think I can add further, except commenting on your post. You mentioned that plenty of animals think. Could you please give me an example of an animal with the capacity to think? You also mentioned that the meaning of life is both a thought and a feeling, which, of course, does not mean anything at all.

Could you please give me an example of an animal with the capacity to think? — MoK

Scientists have proven some chimpanzees "think about thinking", not to mention they use tools to solve problems. That, kind of warrants thinking, in a way.

Dogs in a cage who witness other dogs being killed before them feel a sense of dread and panic, thus suggesting they can, at least in some sense, acknowledge time in the past, present, future dynamic like people do.

Why do they do tricks for treats. Is it really just the Pavlov reaction? Sure they might just do it just to do it, no different than the average non-philosopher works a job for the paycheck, not realizing he's keeping society afloat but simply that he gets money that can be exchanged for stuff he can shove into his mouth and not starve.

Why would Socrates (or whoever) go on and on about making such a big deal about this so-called "unxamined life?" Because people don't think in any reasonable capacity beyond the bare minimum to exist.

Also, elephants mourn their dead. You're making this quite easy. Surely you could do a bit of research?

Nope, just nothing.

I really don't think I can add further, except commenting on your post. You mentioned that plenty of animals think. Could you please give me an example of an animal with the capacity to think? You also mentioned that the meaning of life is both a thought and a feeling, which, of course, does not mean anything at all. — MoK

It does mean something, it means the meaning of life is our invention, we created the concept.

Also as for animals that can think, crows for one. Pigs. Most primates, there are many others. Sounds like you don't see how not special humans are in that department.

Also, elephants mourn their dead. You're making this quite easy. Surely you could do a bit of research? — Outlander

It just sounds like they think humans are the exception when recent research into animals has shown that we are not special in much of what we do.

It just sounds like they think humans are the exception when recent research into animals has shown that we are not special in much of what we do. — Darkneos

Who is "they?"

And, to @MoK's credit, it's not like any animals are going around fat shaming or judging one another by their economic value or political views. Or are they? :chin: :snicker:

And, to MoK's credit, it's not like any animals are going around fat shaming or judging one another by their economic value or political views. Or are they? — Outlander

They do, well not for that but shame is a thing in social animals.