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. — Sapientia
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. — Harry Hindu
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. — jkop
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. — schopenhauer1
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. — intrapersona
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. — wuliheron
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 — John
which cause their lives to be something that merely happens to them while they are busy thinking about something else altogether unimportant. — John
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? — John
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. — John
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 want to find another purpose to life because that one we have is just absurd and downright foolish. — intrapersona
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."
-punshhh
That is just something that humans keep in check in order to sustain a healthy existence, it isn't a purpose to live.
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.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. — intrapersona
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. — 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?What is good? Is good happy? Fulfilled? How much of the time are they like that in order to termed "good life"? — intrapersona
wouldn't the engine off but assembled be the lowest energy state, or if not 1rpm? — intrapersona
Life can be good exactly because you're free from having something to live for. — jkop
In fact, having something to live for will likely prevent you from having other things to live for. — jkop
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. — jkop
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. — jkop
I was saying that purpose can not be happiness or pleasure. — intrapersona
You haven'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). — intrapersona
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. — intrapersona
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. — intrapersona
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. — intrapersona
Buddhist monk, meditates all day in complacency and peace. — intrapersona
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. — John
I'm going to shamelessly post having read very little of the thread. I just really like the question and want to get an answer out there.
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. — csalisbury
To let go of the feeling of needing to keep trying is half the battle. There are numerous techniques and affirmations which allow one to dispel these sentiments and thought patterns that you find yourself preoccupied with. I have found that to achieve spiritual contentment doesn't actually require you to do anything, rather to stop doing things, things which amount to a distraction. So you can put yourself into a frame of mind where all you need to do is relax, rest, allow peace, stillness and quietude into your life, or into spaces in your life. Perhaps a quiet room, or special place in your garden. For me, to sit quietly in a woodland and just listen to the wildlife, feel the breeze, relax into the stillness and feel a space in the silence, would allow the hypereal state of mind to permeate. There is a hypereal joyful state in silence, especially if one can become acostomed to letting one's mind still and enjoy a lack of thought and the peace in simplicity. — Punshhh
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 — Punshhh
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. — Punshhh
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. — Punshhh
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? — unenlightened
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