I ask myself that all the time.

We all know our world is inherently meaningless. — Cidat

Meaning is always relative to some framework. — Cidat

What is "meaning", as you use it?

In what framework is our world meaningless?

Why does it matter if you die? You won't be here to have any feelings about it.

Does anything truly matter? — Cidat

Matter to who? You or me or....?

"Meaning is always relative to some framework." The only framework we can apply to the term 'meaning' is human consciousness. By human consciousness we have defined the term meaning, and our consciousness yearns for some meaning of our existence, preferably a meaning outside of our consciousness. Why that is so that our brains create a definition and longing for meaning, is an interesting question. In reality though, human consciousness could or could not have developed in the universe, the universe would still exist. I am not sure whether nature needs to have a 'meaning'. So I would define meaning as a purely subjective category and we can fill our lives with all kinds of meaning, before our consciousness dies.

Yourself. Does it matter if I go crazy in the next minute? Does it matter if I die in the next second? Does any fate we go through matter in the grand scheme?

To live is to evaluate.

In Spinoza's terms, every life seeks to persist in its existence - continue, survive, grow-develop (à la 'will to power'); thus, every life values - is valuable to - herself; and insofar as a life recognizes other lives as valuable to themselves, a life enters into reciprocal valuing with and among them, to value and be valued by other lives. Thus, value, or meaning, does not come "out of nothing"; it comes from community - natality, sociality, fatality - and reinforced, or enriched, by communicative practices (e.g. cooperative labors, crafts-arts, rituals, trade, discursive dialectics (e.g. scientific / historical / philosophical inquiries)).

Quite naturally, physically, existentially.

Proximately not ultimately - what good is ultimate meaning to proximate living? No promissary metaphysics or spirituality relieves the living of the factity of living here and now as natural natal-eusocial-fatal creatures who survive by the courage to learn & make, judging-deciding on the basis of the facts of the matter, and not by hoping for miracles. The comparative significance of nature and 'the supernatural': yeah, we don't live by bread alone, but we certainly will starve with nothing but 'faith' in otherworldly - "non-physical" ergo fact-free - shadows & fantasies. — 180 Proof

If nothing matters, then not even 'nothing matters' matters.

:death: :flower:

:up:

It's your call. You can do what you are doing, or you can make something matter. Nothing has meaning unless you decide that it does.

Why does it matter if you die? You won't be here to have any feelings about it. — Cidat

I wonder if you'd like to know that you're looking at it upside down - nothing new to it but sure did make me scratch my head trying to get a handle on it.

Gilgamesh, the Sumerian epic hero, was supposed to have embarked on a quest for immortality - the crux of the story being that death takes away any meaning we could give our lives; in short, life doesn't matter because of death. I feel Absurdism is in the same vein.

However, like you, some philosophers have remarked that death too doesn't matter for after death there's nothing to which anything could matter.

It seems we're forced to conclude that both life AND death don't matter for the exact same reason - nothing survives death.

1. If nothing survives death then life doesn't matter in the sense [there's something to be unhappy about]
2. If nothing survives death then death doesn't matter in the sense [there's nothing to be unhappy about]

So,

3. If nothing survives death then there's something to be unhappy about (life doesn't matter) and there's nothing to be unhappy about (death doesn't matter)


Paradox!

From my philosophical standpoint, no reality truly matters. Truth is just truth — Cidat

I don't see the connection between these two sentences. Nor what

Would it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Objectively yes, but from a philosophical perspective, I'm not sure. — Cidat

Objectively it matters, but not philosophically? Is philosophy precisely NOT about the objective?

— Cidat

If conventional beliefs about the beginnings of things are accepted, there is no meaning. If the universe and human consciousness arose via a mindless, random process, there is no meaning. If a God created the universe and ourselves, we are merely a gaggle of slaves to his/hers/its needs of the moment, perhaps useful in some unfathomable manner, but with no more meaning than a manufactured lawn mower.

However, meaning can arise if some component of the human mind, perhaps a definable version of the "soul" concept, has always existed in some form, and is seeking a modicum of self-awareness via interface with a biological machine.

Truth is just truth. — Cidat

From John Keats:

"Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Cidat, is there Heaven on earth (can truth set you free)? Meditate on the meanings of truth; what does it mean to you... . Beauty and ugliness, metaphorically, what do they mean ? Could meaning be inside you?

In other words, when you say "truth is just truth", how sound is your conclusion.

Terhe cluod piboslsy eisxt smoe mianeng whitin aniaitwg rleveoietn togurrh aclipitopan, ctrconoatien, dciteodan and, pilmraiy, htnaimuy.

:strong:

If "nothing matters" is both liberating and depressing then surely it's a question of perspective.

You are cursed to have no peace and find no meaning until you think one kind thought. This truth is just the truth. But in telling you, I have made it harder for you.

Does it matter if I go crazy in the next minute? Does it matter if I die in the next second? Does any fate we go through matter in the grand scheme? — Cidat

Well, presumably it would, to you and those who like, or love, or depend on you. Why disturb yourself over whether it matters to anyone, or anything, else? Just get on with it and, as Epictetus said, "Do the best you can with what you have, and take the rest as it happens." It seems many of the ancients lacked the all-consuming concern with our fates that so many of us have, and likely were the better for it. Read Horace (Ode 1.11):

Leucon, no one’s allowed to know his fate,
Not you, not me: don’t ask, don’t hunt for answers
In tea leaves or palms. Be patient with whatever comes.
This could be our last winter, it could be many
More, pounding the Tuscan Sea on these rocks:
Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines
And forget about hope. Time goes running, even
As we talk. Take the present, the future’s no one’s affair.

Does anything truly matter? — Cidat

Not according to Freddy Mercury....

It's hard to imagine anyone saying, doing, thinking anything other than with the assumption that whatever it is "matters". Anarchists or iconoclasts who seem to want to undermine all values implicitly value something, or else why would they bother?

If nothing matters, why do you care?

Things matter because we have desires, and the thing we desire most fundamentally is to avoid negative emotion. It matters if I step on glass because it'll hurt, potentially kill me. What does it matter if I die? Because I don't want to die, I want to keep living and feeling positive emotions. Not to mention that the thought simply scares me, and I want to avoid the fear.

You might be right that meaning is only relative to us and that there's no universal meaning, but so what? We experience meaning, and I give an explanation for where that meaning comes from. Is this insufficient? And what could some universal meaning give us that we don't already have?

Does anything truly matter? We all know our world is inherently meaningless. But let's imagine that we happened to find some irrefutable meaning in this world. Would it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Objectively yes, but from a philosophical perspective, I'm not sure. Meaning is always relative to some framework. From my philosophical standpoint, no reality truly matters. Truth is just truth. — Cidat

Objectively speaking, everything that exists matters, otherwise it wouldn’t exist. But one irrefutable, ‘objective’ meaning to everything is ultimately meaningless in itself. That’s not to say that imagining the possibility that everything matters isn’t meaningful.

What matters to me most is my potential to interact with the world, and what matters to you is yours. It is where those perspectives intersect that we achieve, and in their difference I can recognise that your potential to interact is meaningful even if it doesn’t realise my own (and vice versa), because you matter to me. Or else I can ignore what else matters to you, and risk the potential in the relationship we share by trying to limit your potential to interact with the world, simply because that potential holds no specific value/potential for me.

Perhaps what matters, ultimately, is how we relate.

Yes, matter.

(1. Matter makes itself significant).

The alternative is that we just give up and think 'nothing matters' though truly things do.

But let's imagine that we happened to find some irrefutable meaning in this world. Would it really matter in the grand scheme of things? — Cidat

Yes, obviously. If what it means to "matter" is to be significant, important or consequential, then "to find some irrefutable meaning in this world" would surely be that.

Putting aside these hypotheticals, to lose your life or the lives of your loved ones is most likely to be of at least some consequence to yourself and/or others, "the grand scheme of things" be damned.

If nothing matters, why do you care?

Things matter because we have desires, and the thing we desire most fundamentally is to avoid negative emotion. — QuixoticAgnostic

O Conatus, baby! :up:

:clap:

Welcome to TPF, QA.

Does anything truly matter? We all know our world is inherently meaningless. But let's imagine that we happened to find some irrefutable meaning in this world. Would it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Objectively yes, but from a philosophical perspective, I'm not sure. Meaning is always relative to some framework. From my philosophical standpoint, no reality truly matters. Truth is just truth. — Cidat

There are two directions one can use to decipher the world. We can begin at the beginning and extrapolate forward or we can begin at the end and extrapolate backwards. The first looks at the first cause and sees the second, the third, the fourth, and so on, and with that, we explain our current existence. The second looks at the final goal and it asks what each step before it did to achieve the final goal.

The first approach is a causal explanation and the second a teleological one.

We don't know the first cause nor the final goal.

I'd submit that either approach is equally valid then, accepting then that each event we experience today either had some mysterious origin or it has some mysterious goal. I choose the latter approach because it imbues meaning in the world, and I submit it is as equally logical as a causal approach.

Why does it matter if you die? You won't be here to have any feelings about it. — Cidat

Well, that's not necessarily true, but it's certainly a fair deduction from the material. Maybe the problem you have is that you are right, and there is no reason for anything to matter from a material sense. Science is cold, and philosophy does have alot of trouble trying to state what meaning should be in a purely objective manner, to such an extent, any attempts to state meaning objectively are frequently meaningless to the inquirer, no matter how rational the attempts are.

That means one ends up looking to the subjective for meaning, rather than the objective, so it becomes a matter of belief. The philoosphy of belief has been unable to resolve differences of opinion on subjective meaning, and it ends up becoming religion. I do find myself repeating that alot here, lol.

All these words to answer such a simple question. No, none of it matters, unless it matters to you, in which case its importance (whatever it is) is isolated locally with you. Unless the perception of separation of self from other is but an illusion, in which case I guess you could argue that everything matters to everyone. Personally, I like the idea that all this absurdity, all this suffering, everything, is for no purpose, means nothing, and ultimately doesn't matter.

I feel the same. The true goal of each must be to seek preservation of own consciousness.

Even if objective meaning existed, it would be pointless since we already had it. No matter how I look at it, I can only see one answer: All values are subjective. Even an eternal existence with objective meaning would be pointless. I subscribe to the subjective theory of value.

Does anything truly matter? — Cidat

No.