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

Buddhist monk, meditates all day in complacency and peace.

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

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.

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

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 ;)

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 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.

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

wouldn't the engine off but assembled be the lowest energy state, or if not 1rpm?

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

So it is because they ask those questions that their lives are full of dissatisfaction? Surely it is the other way round... *ahem*

which cause their lives to be something that merely happens to them while they are busy thinking about something else altogether unimportant. — John

Sounds very similar to:

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

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.

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.

I like what you say here cs, it is very well expressed and I can relate to it to a most high degree. 8-)

Thanks man!

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.

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.

Just contradicted yourself, you say it might be then you say it is.

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.

how did you get from "they have liberty to pursue purposes" to "they have purpose'?

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.

I want to find another purpose to life because that one we have is just absurd and downright foolish. — intrapersona

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?

I wouldn't call being afraid to fall of a cliff "intellectual strategic action", more like instinct.

Yes, but instinct is a rudimentary form of purpose, it is strategic action stipulated by cells and groups of cells. There is also intellectual strategic action in organisms with large brains.

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.

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."

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 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.

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

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.

What is good? Is good happy? Fulfilled? How much of the time are they like that in order to termed "good life"? — 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?

wouldn't the engine off but assembled be the lowest energy state, or if not 1rpm? — intrapersona

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.

Life can be good exactly because you're free from having something to live for. — jkop

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.

In fact, having something to live for will likely prevent you from having other things to live for. — jkop

Which isn't necessarily bad.

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

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.

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 don't agree. I just think that you're reading way more 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., obviously have something to live for: any single one - or a combination - of those aforementioned.

I was saying that purpose can not be happiness or pleasure. — intrapersona

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 seeking to attain happiness or pleasure can be a purpose.

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

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 just told you that. I addressed your OP, as you encouraged me to do, and I have countered several of your points.

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

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).

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

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?

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

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...

Buddhist monk, meditates all day in complacency and peace. — 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.

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

Ok, but that doesn't say anything about the purpose of life

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

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.

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

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).

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

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.

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

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".

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

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.

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

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"