Even if it were somehow possible for an argument to "decide for itself," we'd need to be able to recognize this, wouldn't we? — Terrapin Station

You see a blue pen. Someone says it's green. There's a definition of blue by measuring the spectrum of light bouncing from that blue pen. The spectrum shows its green. You are wrong, it is green. You might have color blindness, you might have an issue with how your brain process visual sensory information. Doctors find a tumor.

Did someone decide you had a tumor? Did someone decide the pen was green?

Someone say black people should be restricted in society. Why?
He says they do more crimes than white people. Is this true?
He says some black people in his neighborhood has committed crimes against him.
Conclusion: his opinion is based on flaws and emotion that when expressed push hate between black and white people, segregating them. This is harmful speech, concluded by breaking down his speech and analyzing the intention or the reason for it. It breaks point 4 and upheld point 2 and 3 of my previous list.

Someone say black people should be restricted in society. Why?
He says they do more crimes than white people. Is this true?
He says that statistics of the city has shown there to be more crimes among black people.
Conclusion: his opinion is dangerous in its conclusion but still within the freedom of speech since he presented a reason for his argument that demands taking a look at the facts. This simplified conclusion of his might stir up emotion, but it can also lead to looking into these statistics and researching why it is like it is. Further down the road, it might lead to tackling crime by working on the socioeconomics of the city. His argument might feel like a personal attack, it might look like it's point 2 and 3, but because it's based on facts in point 4, the causality is not leading to pitching black and whites against each other but improvements to the well being of society.

Pitching people's arguments against those four points, testing them through a rational deduction, gives an answer to if the opinion is harmful or constructive freedom of speech.

If you can't recognize what is a valid argument you are not educated enough to be able to break down an opinion to find out if it is. The list I presented earlier is a good starting point to validate someone's opinion. If you think there are flaws in that list, then that's in line with what I said that it's a process that, like anything else, need to be evolving. But the four points aren't an opinion, they're a framework based on the well-being of the self and others. If you can't agree to a foundation that is about the well-being of the self and others, then you need to present an argument for why we should form conclusions about a society based on anything else as a foundation and what that other thing should be.

The framework is the well-being of the self and others and the deductive argument through that decides if something is harmful or constructive through freedom of speech. No one decides out of opinion through this and if someone is unable to conclude if something is harmful through a rational argument because they lack the knowledge to do so, they should not be the ones doing the deduction. If this is something you cannot agree with you first need to explain why well-being of the self and others isn't a foundation to build a strategy on. It's the framework for the argument that decides what is what and it's the framework that removes the individual opinion about what is free speech and what is harmful speech. This is the basic elements for the argument's use.

And so who decides? — Terrapin Station

If the argument is solid it's the argument that decides. This has been answered many times to you, but I'm starting to believe you don't know what a rational argument is or how it works. I'm not going to answer anymore to someone who doesn't seem to understand the answers given. You aren't building on them, you are just asking your questions over and over without even listening to the answers given. If you aren't interested in a proper dialectic then there's no point.

Did the suffering lead to the individual growing a further understanding of life and gave them tools to tackle life in a way that is better than before?

Did the suffering after a certain event stay with the person in such a way that it is crippling them and their thinking?

Did the suffering cause such harm that they can't have a balanced life and all that is left is depression, hopelessness, and longing for life to end?

I think that these questions should be answered to find out if the suffering was enough. Because suffering isn't just part of life, it is essential to be able to reach a balanced point of view. I have never met anyone with a balanced morality, balanced opinions, rational view on hard questions etc. that didn't go through some kind of hard suffering in their life. But I think the key is that the suffering should lead to the person growing and becoming a better person both for others and themselves, if not, if it keeps them down, if it's destructive for their well being or others well being while limiting their ability to grow as individuals beyond that suffering, it is too much.

What is too much and what is not is very much up to each individual. That's why some can walk through fire, destruction, mass deaths, and horrors and still come out as stronger people with a kind soul and feel happiness. While others who experienced just one of their loved ones dying might have crippling traumas for life.

I don't think we can find an objective balance to this, it's a balance in each individuals life. But we could help those who can't find that balance. I'm generally a person who acts on my sufferings like they are valued life lessons like any other. I think that is a healthy way of looking at pain and suffering, as things that teach us something. It's painful but look for each lesson each event gives you and try to use it rather than suppressing it.

To Joe, they lead to a justified conclusion. To Bill, they do not. Now what do you do? — Terrapin Station

Because it's based on facts outside of Bill's and Joe's opinions, biases, and past down doctrines. That's why. If so, Joe might think the conclusion isn't what he hoped for, but it's proven to be best for most people and the most balanced conclusion at the time. For Bill, he just wants reality to be formed by his own opinion and is in the wrong.

This is what deduction is. You don't seem to understand the foundation of what a reasonable argument is composed of.

And we non-personally figure out if we've deduced a correct conclusion via? — Terrapin Station

The facts. I'm wondering, have you ever done any deduction or induction? How do you reach conclusions in your philosophical thinking? Are you just expressing opinions? Because just expressing opinions is quickly picked apart in philosophy, you need to have more than just Bill and Joe's opinions.

That is beautiful! :hearts: That is the kind of thinking that attracts me to the forum and gives me hope for humanity. — Athena

Kind words are rare, thank you!

If we all understood the reasoning you gave us, we wouldn't need moderators because logical and social agreements would rule. We need moderators now because we have neither the understanding of logic nor the social agreements and things spin out of control without authority over us. That reality pushes the question of who has that authority and what qualifies someone to be a moderator, and should the accused have a defense and a trail? — Athena

And this is the challenge really. I think that a balanced and strong moral compass comes out of a balanced life in which both positive and negative events form the identity of the adult thinker. This balance is however very hard to achieve for every person in a civilization. This is why decisions need to be formed out of a process, a deduction, a way of reaching a balanced answer through research rather than influenced by pushing a morality that is essentially a past down doctrine.

Throughout history, we have only taken positive steps forward in society by questioning the norms of the day with rationality and reason. Each time we have changed the world through that, we have improved the quality of life and well-being. Each time we have changed something with questionable logic or through other reasons than what equates to the most well-being for all, we have opened up society to the horrors of mankind.

The baseline should not be that someone in power has authority over others and through that creates balance. It should be through a process of logic based on the well-being and quality of life for all. Philosophical deduction and dialectics about everything should be the foundation of society. All can participate in the discussion, but only the most well-thought and rational arguments should be what guides society. If someone proposes an argument that is good for 10 people and someone disputes it by pointing out that there are 12 people and they have an argument that is good for all 12, that solution is the norm before someone points out something better.

This foundation is however never settled on a solution to fit all, it's a dialectic over time. Always balancing what is best for people.

In this case, the question is freedom of speech vs harmful speech. For those not using "the process of deduction" to reach a balanced answer, it pitches them to either binary side of the argument. Generally, this is the majority of how people behave with these types of questions, tribalism rather than actually thinking. But it's easy to get started, just think about the positives and negatives of each side, see if there's a way to find that balanced position. Harmful speech can destroy lives, it can lead up to such horrors as genocide if left unchecked, but blindly limiting it can lead to state control or even personal censorship that limits people's ability to think freely. How does one balance between freedom and protection of the people?

First off, pinpoint what harmful speech is, is it personal, general?

In a liberal place, all people are agents of their freedom, they make decisions for themselves and have obligations to society only through self-interest. It reflects much how human psychology actually works. Limiting peoples freedom leads to corruption and control by others over that freedom. But an unbalanced person could create havoc on other people if everyone is free to do anything. The self-limitations only work if a person already has a balanced moral code. And if one unbalanced person becomes powerful enough to have followers under their ideas, it could lead to things like Nazi-Germany.
So the conclusion here is that freedom of the individual is essential for the well-being of a person since it's the natural psychological state we have. But unlimited freedom can lead to very dark places. Unlimited freedom is therefore not the answer and we can't have unlimited freedom of speech since it can lead to harmful results. But how do we limit freedom of speech? First, we already apply laws to crimes like murder, physical harm, and even psychological harm through harassment, insults, libel etc. We have defined laws against individual actions against another individual. So defining harmful speech already has some basics within it, like those we have laws against, those defined by actual harm to others. So what is the balance between? Crime vs freedom? No, it has to be about the things that can't be proven as crimes since the causality can't be direct. If a large group of millions of people uses a speech that builds up hate for a specific group of people over a set of 10 to 20 years, that is not possible to punish in court or for any law to prosecute. Most people don't even realize transitions through this period of time and children growing up within this timeframe might even learn that this is the norm of society.

Harmful speech vs freedom of speech is therefore about long term consequences within a free society. By looking at it like this, it's easier to start seeing how to draw up a deduction to define when someone is making a harmful speech and when someone is expressing themselves backed up by the freedom of speech. For me, the baseline is those four points I made in an earlier post. By using them, we can define what someone is actually saying. Like for example, if someone is blaming Muslims for all terrorist attacks. Is that statement based on facts? Looking at those facts it's clear that there's a very small fraction of Muslims that are actually fundamentalists doing these terrorist acts, it's in the numbers and makes the statement not based on facts but through racism against this group. The statement is, therefore, a harmful speech and should be removed, blocked and erased since it's not an expression of freedom of speech, it's an expression that pitch groups against each other, it's creating conflict and rise of racism. If someone or many are killed down the line because of such speeches, it's comparable to when someone talks about killing someone and someone who hears it commits that act. It should not be tolerated because the causality is there. But if someone is criticizing how Islam has violent ideas in their religious texts and that there's a wide-spread limitation of women's rights that is destructive for people's well-being within Muslim states and you look into those facts, it's clear that there are violent ideas that some could twist into dangerous acts and women's rights are in fact limited to the point that they are not equal to men and violence within families, honor killings by husbands and brothers occur. This is a speech that is based on those facts and therefore is a reasonable and rational criticism against Muslim ways of life with the well-being of people in mind.

This is why so many jump to conclusions, because they do not look into facts, they do not understand where on the scale someone's speech is put and if someone use both facts and twist them into arguments that are racist, if people did breakdown their argument they should demand the person to put forth an argument that is without that racism otherwise be blocked or censored.

So back to the question of authority, the deduction process is the decision making for what is and what is not harmful. But the authority should be the one making this deduction. If a person does not have the qualifications to be able to do a deduction of this kind, they should not be in this position. In terms of moderators of a forum, they should be on that level, if they aren't, they are essentially advocating destructive censorship over free speech and if they don't care at all, they are putting out the red carpet for destructive causality.

This is why I think there's a point to the philosopher kings. I'm very critical against the unlimited democracy that we have today since it creates demagogy. The people in power should be elected, but having anyone who just decided to become a politician be able to reach those levels because they know how to play it rather than being balanced thinkers creates a very unbalanced society. The only reason why most western societies haven't crashed and burned is that we've had enough restrictions on these politicians to keep the machine from becoming too corrupted. But my opinion is that we should have a little more demand on the moral compass and knowledge that politicians have. We have it for any other occupation in society, but not politics.

We don't all agree though. Not at all. — Terrapin Station

Deduction, making a rational and reasonable argument bypass disagreement.

So someone has to make the decisions about what counts and what doesn't, etc. — Terrapin Station

No, deduction bypass personal opinion, that's the point.

Who gets to make those decisions and why do they get to make them? (And what do we do with the folks who don't agree with those decisions?) — Terrapin Station

If the deduction of a speech that criticizes a specific ethnic group, concludes that it is not based on facts and that the criticism is coming from an emotional reaction out of a fear of the unknown (fear of another ethnicity). The deduction itself has proven it to be a harmful speech against this group and that the possible consequences of such a speech may stir up hate against this ethnic group, further pushing a division between people and the rise of racism between them. No one decided this, the deduction and breakdown of the speech decided this.

Why is it so hard to understand that "who" is irrelevant to this process? What actions to take after a deduction has concluded is another question entirely. This is about spotting harmful speech vs free speech. "Unlimited tolerance leads to intolerance" is something I think you know about? So the question is, how do we spot intolerance in order to limit that without infringing on free speech? To view this as a binary "free or controlled" question is an extremely simplified and naive take on the subject.

It's like you don't even read the arguments put forward and just keep pushing the "who's deciding" argument. It's already been answered.

How do we get to "This isn't factual and reasonable" if someone doesn't decide that? — Terrapin Station

By deduction of what the speech is saying. Or are you not able to break down what someone is saying to find if it's based on rational ideas or if it's based on emotional unreasonable ideas about another group of people? Are you unable to form a dialectic with the one who formed the speech to question the validity of their speech through pointing out the lack of facts?

If you encounter someone who says "I think black people shouldn't be mixed with white people". Are you unable to break down that thing into: "Is this based on facts and if so what?". If that person then reply saying "I think white and blacks are too different to exist together". Are you unable to question: "Are black and white people so different that this is true?" and "Does keeping black and white people separated creating a healthy balance in society that has a positive effect on people and society?"

The deduction of a person's speech is kindergarten-level breakdown of intentions. If you can't see what is harmful to groups of people, what is dividing people and what can lead to things like genocide and racism, then you might be too uneducated to spot these things. It's a very basic form of questioning someone's opinion that should be obvious for anyone with a normal education.

The problem is still that you view this as an authority, a "who" that decides something. It's like you intentionally misunderstand what "deduction" means in order to push the idea of an authoritarian agent deciding things.

Deduction bypass authority. It's the breakdown of a speech that informs if it's harmful or not, no one decides.

Read the entire thing and you will understand that your fixation with "who" is irrelevant.

One or more persons' feelings could be hurt by anything conceivable. Anything you might say, anything you might wear, any way you might look at them, etc. — Terrapin Station

Point 1 is, therefore, pointing out that harmful speech isn't about hurting a specific person.

Who gets to decide what's negative or not and why do they get to decide? — Terrapin Station

By deduction of the validity of what someone says is meant to stir up hate as in point 3, or is valid criticism, as in point 4.

Dividing people into categories like "Folks who say prohibited things"? — Terrapin Station

That idea is a reductio ad absurdum fallacy. By using these points to figure out if someone is using non-factual criticism of a group in order to spread hate and divide people, does not mean putting them into a group that says "prohibited things" and should, therefore, be stripped of rights. You are making an absurd hypothesis of what this is about.

Who gets to decide what's factual and reasonable and why do they get to decide? — Terrapin Station

By proper deduction of what is being said.

Why are you so focused on "who gets to decide"? It's not about who, it's about how people should spot harmful speech that is destructive on society. You seem to be extremely fixated on the idea of an authority that goes around censoring that you do not even understand the basic idea that I proposed. It's not about "who" is going to decide, it's about everyone using their intellect to know the effects of harmful speech and how to spot it. If you use those four points onto someone's criticism about a group you can deduce if it's a criticism that is made through a rational and reasonable argument or if the argument is coming from hate of a group. If Nazis are talking about Jews as vermin, does that have any factual support if you break down their argument? Or is it harmful speech that out of repetition creates hate of Jews? Point 2 and 3.

I think my point was pretty straight forward and has nothing to do with "who gets to decide". No one decides. Deduction of the intention of a speech decides if it's harmful or not. If you don't believe that harmful speech can stir up extremely destructive consequences, I think you should read up on how the apathy of the German civilian population made room for how Jews were treated. It's the most obvious and well-known example of this thing.

It's a good sentiment. But it still doesnt work. I used to live in a black neighborhood, and anything that I said would be interpreted as hateful. Anything at all. I couldnt even say hello without black people claiming I was trying to start a fight. — ernestm

It's more of a starting point. As I mentioned, an evolving form is the most optimal form. But I would say that your example is an example of when it's not harmful speech. If you said "hi" and that was considered harmful, it was those who considered it to be so that was in the wrong. They can be right in criticism about how whites treated them, they can be right in many things about their situation and socioeconomic position and they can be skeptical about the presence of white people in their neighborhood based on previous accounts of negative events. All of those are based on point 4. If they break point 4 they are not sticking to facts and uphold point 3 and 2. If they were just out to hurt you personally, as in point 1, they wouldn't have the need to bring ethnicity/race into the way they treated you. So, they essentially didn't have the intention of hurting you personally, breaking point 1, they didn't have factual reasons for rational criticism of your presence, as in point 4 and they upheld point 2 and 3.

Therefore, they committed harmful speech and should be criticized for doing so.

So it's not an example against my points, it's enforcing that baseline even more. The example you brought up seems to be focused on the idea that harmful speech is only against minorities or specific groups in line with what we see in media, but harmful speech is based on parameters that aren't influenced by the current state of politics. You can apply those four points to any time in history between any groups of people and it's still a good baseline for judging if someone is committing hateful speech that ends up dividing people.

It is actually impossible to stop discrimination for that reason. — ernestm

It's only impossible to handle the balance of free speech vs harmful speech if you handle it as a binary system. If you are able to accept things to be a shifting complex entity rather than a simple line between two points, it's possible to handle it. But the problem is that all those in charge of handling it, does so in this binary way. In that sense, you are right that it's impossible.

But for those of us who like to solve the riddle, I think handling the subject like a tesseract rather than a cube. At a philosophical level, all things need to be that way. If something is a square you think a cube if something is a cube you think a tesseract. I don't think that this subject is unsolvable, I think it's constructed of an answer that is always shifting, i.e the definitions of harmful and free speech need to be closely connected to what we perceive as being that in society.

Let's say that there comes a time when bald people would be considered lower in intelligence and a lower class of humans. Today it's not very nice to call out someone's baldness, but it's not racist. It's classified more within free speech and no one is going to call out someone for making fun of baldness as being racist or committing a hate crime. But if there is a general idea through society that they have lower intelligence and are a lower class people, it has become racism and the harmful vs free speech should reflect that at that time.

There's been a lot of research done on how hateful speech triggers behavior that is harmful to the people the hate speech is about. It's generally not about someone getting hurt by the words, but by how the acceptance of hateful speech numbs a society into a certain behavior. Talking about Jews as a lower class people or calling them vermin, as was done in 30's Nazi-Germany, didn't result in the words themselves hurting Jews. Even if they did get hurt and many fell into depressing mental health issues, the biggest threat was how the general talk formed the entire society into acceptance of how Jews should be treated. People stopped caring when they were dragged out into the streets and forced onto trains. Because of years of talking about them as vermin made people accept them as vermin. People, collectively, are pretty much stupid in this regard. Over a course of time, you can make a population think and feel just about anything if you know how to do it. Anyone who thinks this is bullshit does not know about the psychology behind it and need to read up on it before pointing out that free speech should be unrestricted and binary freed.

The question shouldn't be about the binary ideas of free speech vs restricted speech. It should be how to define harmful speech since the result of unrestricted free speech has been proven to generate the worst crimes in history. It's naive to think that this is a binary topic in which you choose a position and then simplifies reality around it.

So to break down the building blocks of harmful speech that should be restricted.
1. It's not about hurting one or more peoples feelings.
2. It's about creating a negative idea about a group of people.
3. It divides people into categories that through repetition may build hate/dislike between groups.
4. It is not based on factual sources that work as a foundation for reasonable criticism of a group.

There may be added points of definitions, but in general, I think it's reasonable to define harmful speech not as hurting others directly but indirectly steers society into dividing people and creating foundations for hate that might build acceptance of negative actions against these groups. We saw it with Jews in Nazi-Germany and we see it today with immigrants and Muslims. Derogatory speech against immigrants by people like Trump and his followers has increased the acceptance-level of derogatory actions against immigrants and Muslims.

But we can also see it in other movements like the wave of feminism that's going on. As I mentioned, the derogatory talk about white men, the use of "CIS men" in derogatory ways are increasing the acceptance levels of negative actions against white men. To the point of courts lowering their level of evidence requirements in cases of sexual violence when the accused is a white man.

If you actually analyze and look closely at different speeches it's actually not that hard to spot what is harmful speech and what is free speech. If we define it through the points above it's not that hard to see when someone is using facts to criticize a group behavior, like the common violence against women within the culture of Islam and when it's harmful speech aimed at pitching groups against each other or derogatory against a certain group, like if someone says all CIS white men are responsible for violence against women. When someone is using facts to describe why there's a lot of crimes committed by a group of immigrants by analyzing their situation and socio-economical reasons, compared to when someone is using harmful speech to blame immigrants as a way to find a black sheep for their own failures.

I actually don't find it hard to spot what is what in society and I think that just taking a stance on either binary side, where you at one point want to ban all things that might sound harmful (even when it's not, in the way that blind SJWs are doing) and unrestricted freedom of speech that's oblivious to the effects it can cause down the line.

You don't choose a side, you deduce the balance and hold that ground.

Just to point out, this is ending up discriminating against people for speaking at all about differences in ethnicity, gender, or culture. There is no clear line what constitutes criticism and what not. — ernestm

No, it's not. You are taking one part of my text out of context and doesn't read into the nuances of the entirety of it. This is usually the way these discussions go; the nuances get thrown out the window to make a point instead of actually understanding the argument someone said before answering.

Nice post. Just sad that you had to start it with a statement equal in merit to one that begs the question. What do you think? — Wallows

Maybe that went into somewhat of a fallacy, but I think the general note is that people talk a lot about objective meaning to life or similar, but there isn't a single rational argument that can provide a notion that there is any objective meaning to our lives or to anything. We are too biased to our own existence and therefore we give ourselves more value than we have in comparison to the entire universe. So we believe irrationally that there is a grand meaning to our existence when any reasonable induction points to there being none. We can only invent a meaning, meaningful to ourselves as human beings and because of our individuality we can't invent an objective meaning, only individual ones. We might be able to conclude a meaning, value or purpose that might be true for as many people in as many different cultures and situations as possible, but we could never find anything truly universally objective.

What I am saying about String “Theory” and M “Theory” is that they are no better than me saying there is a universe where I am king of the world. My language of English makes this possible. The language of mathematics (which is pure tautology) makes it possible for physicists to say there are 11 dimensions. — Noah Te Stroete

The difference is that no scientist is saying that they are the truth. Because they are only hypotheses. Popular media have distorted these ideas into being something they are not. But in religion assumptions and guesses equal proof or logical reasonable arguments for God. That's why religious apologists arguments are childish at best. String theory and M-theory are only a path towards a unification theory, nothing more, nothing less, so using it as a counter-argument to what I have said becomes weak as a counter argument. There's been a lot of hypotheses from the days of Einstein that have been considered unprovable and impossible to use as scientific theories, only to later be proven and become solid facts. But you assume that to mean that String theory as it's proposed now to be proven in the future, but not even within the scientific community is string theory considered true or anything other than a stepping stone of scientific reasoning based on established facts towards a unification theory.

You are still just saying the same thing over and over, but it's still not in support of the Kalam argument proving anything at all or any religious argument to be at anywhere near the level of a scientific hypotheses since those are based on a lot of facts and established science while religious arguments assume way too much in order to reach their conclusions. I don't see religious arguments being anywhere near scientific ones because the foundation of the two is like comparing child play with a lab. Saying that some scientific hypotheses to be impossible or close to impossible to prove does not lead to religious arguments becoming more logical or reasonable, they are still weak. It's like a desperate attempt to put flawed arguments at the level of unproven science in order to argue that therefore the religious flawed argument "could be true". This is a very flawed way of trying to push flawed arguments into being more reasonable without actually making the argument reasonable.

No. They are unprovable, untestable hypotheses. There are no CONCEIVABLE experiments to test their validity. This was not the case with the Higgs Boson. — Noah Te Stroete

Can you see into the future? Do you know that humanity will never be able to prove them? Isn't that an assumption that demands you to know a lot of the scientific history of the future? Also, your example about string theory counter argues nothing of what I said about science and religion. The big difference is that those who have less to no insight into the world of science generally misunderstand theories and hypotheses as nothing more than guesses when they are far more than that since they have a foundation in established science. Religious arguments get into childish logic at best.

Furthermore, internal consistency in mathematics may not refer to anything in reality. M theory may be mathematical fantasy. — Noah Te Stroete

As I said, nothing of what you say about the topic of string theory and m-theory counter argues what I previously said.

Perhaps you are not familiar with philosophers’ objections to calling String Theory and M Theory “not science” in that they are not even conceivably testable? They are metaphysics. Not true scientific theories. — Noah Te Stroete

They have a foundation in already proven theories and facts. They are hypotheses. Just like I said the Higgs Boson field and Gravitational waves were unprovable and considered "fantasy" by those criticizing science. They are both proved to be true. The difference is that the science community does not conclude them to be true, they know they are hypotheses and nothing more. But religious apologists use this to propose that "therefore our ideas could be true", which is a fallacy. And the Kalam argument still doesn't do much, even if we in the end proves there to be a sentient being kickstarting the universe and Big Bang, that in itself still doesn't underline that this being is "God". The confusion about hypotheses and theories as concepts in the scientific world seem to be a big reason why people don't understand the ideas proposed. No one who is educated about string theory or m-theory propose them to be true, but they are also not rooted in fantasy but already established science, which means they are qualified guesses compared to just guesses. The difference between the two is night and day.

My point was that so-called “scientific” hypotheses about the origin of the universe or what caused the Big Bang are untestable, unverifiable conjectures, pure metaphysics. As such, they are not really science. — Noah Te Stroete

A hypothesis is a qualified guess not yet proven. That is not the same as the type of guesswork that apologists do when trying to use philosophical arguments. The scientific process is pretty solid in what it does, it does not conclude any answers until they are scientific theories. You are also pinpointing testing Big Bang as being untestable. That would require you to be able to conclude that science will not ever be able to test or measure these things into proven theories. You do not know that and it comes off as the people saying people would never fly and then we did. That's a lot of assumptions about science in order to defend the Kalam argument, but it requires you to know all the scientific discoveries in the future.

If the Kalam argument was to be solid, there can't be anything that can refute it. Assuming things about science or God does not make the argument correct. That is why it fails.

Pointing out that science is equal to faith by pointing out that hypotheses aren't proven is a misunderstanding of what a hypothesis is and also a simplification of the scientific process in order to support an argument that science is flawed. The difference between science and religion is that science requires burden of proof to be fulfilled and it never points to hypotheses being anything other than qualified guesses. But even with qualified guesses, they are still rooted in much more solid grounds through already proven theories and facts than proposing ideas about God on top of an argument that doesn't even connect to it, which is what religious apologists does.

The big difference is that science evolves and changes their view on a subject by testing and working it out through logic and measurements in order to reach as close to truth as possible. Religion doesn't do that, it concludes without proper logical reasoning and fills in gaps to fit the narrative. The two aren't even comparable.

A good example of an "unprovable" hypothesis is the one about the Higgs Boson field and also the one about gravitational waves. Both were recently proven to be true and measurable. Assuming that science can't answer something based on what we can't answer today, ignoring any possibility of answering it in the future, is a big logical misstep.

Show me where I've declared it so. You can't. What I actually said was that I remain unconvinced that it's sound. — S

It is sound, in describing that something must be the first cause of all the causality. It doesn't prove anything else than that. But one could argue that the argument assumes the first cause to be defined by our universal laws and what we can measure with scientific methods at this time in history. If we can't define the first cause, we don't even know if we can pinpoint it as a first cause in the timeline of our time dimension. So the argument in a way assumes a lot about its conclusion, even if we detach it from the idea of God. It really doesn't do much as an argument since so much of the premises needs to be proven before the conclusion.

It's a very weak argument that requires belief and assumptions to work, meaning it's flawed, at best says there was a Big Bang... which we already know through scientific theories.

However, the need for a cause of the universe is still there, and the so-called “scientific” causes are also posited faiths. — Noah Te Stroete

Scientific causes are based in hypotheses and theories and no one of them is concluding anything to be true. Faith and religion settle down with it being God. That is a logical misstep. Science has much more pressure to prove something and if you believe that they present something equal to faith you misunderstand the scientific process entirely. You need to prove that the first cause, if you can prove there to be a first cause and not for example circular time is the truth, is God. If you can't, the Kalam argument doesn't prove anything. It's actually a pretty weak argument saying essentially nothing outside of common sense about causality really. So the Kalam argument does not have anything to do with God and any notion it does is a fallacy if it's not proven. Burden of proof still applies, or the teapots will fly around the sun, if you understand that reference.

I don’t watch videos on philosophy forums. Lay out the argument in the video, and then I will respond. — Noah Te Stroete

The video is deconstructing the argument in detail much better than me transcribing it here. If you really want an explanation on why the argument fails, then you might need to put in some time and effort to listen to those who dispute it. To just ignore when a sound deconstruction is presented just because it's a video pretty much sums up that you are not interested in actual arguments, you just seem to want to hold your ground about this. That, if anything, is NOT philosophy.

The Kalam argument only points to there being a first cause that caused the universe, it does not conclude anything else and assuming anything else is a fallacy. If you want more depth, see the video.

Then you have to show where the Kalam Cosmological Argument is unsound. Philosophy dictates that you can’t just declare it so. — Noah Te Stroete

And you can't conclude a conclusion that doesn't have anything to do with the actual conclusion of the argument. Assumptions about what the conclusion to the Kalam Cosmological Argument is, does not equal those assumptions to be the true conclusion.

If you need a good sum of why the argument is flawed, please watch this.

Life is not meaningless — Paul24

According to your idea of what is meaningful? That is not an objective of what is meaningful, that is your own definition and cannot be applied to the universe.

If you observe closely you will begin to realise that everything is a cycle and it repeats itself from the beginning of time. Life is like a chess board. Every piece has its own value and its own place. — Paul24

This is not a valid premise for the argument.

Second of all, you will see that even if we look at the bigger picture (for instance the life span of the galaxy or the universe) our existence seems insignificant but yet we are conscious of our environement and we are able to interact and change things around us. That is a certain form of power. — Paul24

This premise does not support any meaningfulness of life, it only says that we are powerful since we can control aspects of the universe. That is not the same as meaning.

To conclude, everything that you see is relative. From the macroscopic world that seems to us like really old and moving slowly to the quantic world where everything seems to move faster its only a question of scale. Maybe we are 7 billion years old as humans for the quantic world (who knows). — Paul24

What is this a conclusion of? It's not a conclusion of any objective meaning to our life and it isn't a conclusion of any premises before it.

I fail to see how you rationally prove there to be any meaning through this argument. It's not a solid argument.

Isn't that a paradox? Meaning that if one can objectively state that life has no meaning, then that objective statement in itself provides grounds to establish some meaning. This is the issue in a nutshell. To provide meaning to a life that objectively has no meaning. Hence, should we treat meaning as something of greater importance than tastes and preferences? — Wallows

Objective meaning can only exist if you can prove it to exist. It's like proving the existence of God. The burden of proof requires you to prove there to be an objective meaning or purpose of life. So far no one has provided such proof and anyone claiming so seem to not have much insight into cognitive bias and argument fallacies.

But if we speak about subjective meaning, or sense of meaning, our personal search for the purpose to our own lives. It should still be the highest point of our life, not just taste and preferences. I like chocolate is a taste and preference in candy, but that's not a purpose or meaning of my life. Searching for my own purpose in my life should be about finding the place and state of mind in which I feel my identity is in line with the life I live. It's a broader aspect of my life. The search for it should not stop at "I feel pleasure, therefore my life has found meaning", it should be deeper than such trivial feelings. In a sense, a personal divine feeling of purpose. Problem is that people who have found such a feeling of divine purpose apply this to the rest of the world as the truth in objective meaning, which is false. It becomes false as soon as you try to apply your meaning to the external world.

Meaning is, in my opinion, greater than taste and preferences, but my meaning and purpose is not greater than myself. I and my purpose/meaning is one and the same by internal measurements never to be external.

Taste and preference is something else. It's the foundation for my identity within society. If I had tastes and preferences being the only living human in the universe, then my taste and preference is universal human law. As soon as there are two human beings or more, it's an identity marker within that group of humans. In a larger society, it becomes an identity marker for you and for a group of people with similar taste and preferences. There are no right or wrong tastes and preferences, it's only a definition of identity for the individual or group. If a racist has the preference of hate against another ethnicity, that is not wrong in terms of taste and preferences, because it's individual and it identifies that racist's identity in society. Law, justice, and morals define how we judge this racist identity in society, but that is the result of that identity, not ruling taste and preferences as a concept to be a problem or objective. We cannot say a taste and preference is wrong since it's only a marker. It's like saying apples are wrong and bananas are right, it makes no sense. But we identify apples by it's building blocks to come to the conclusion that we hate apples. We cannot hate the building blocks that define the apple, but the apple itself. We cannot hate the taste and preference of the racist, but we can hate the racist.

My taste and preferences define me as a person in front of you who experience me and my identity. All people on this forum has a taste and preference to like philosophy, that's why we are here. That doesn't mean that it is an objective truth about people that it's true and considered right to like philosophy, but it defines us who are here within society and the civilization we're in. That's why it makes no sense to try and apply taste and preferences as a foundation for meaning or purpose on an objective level.

This topic is a hot potato that should be a healthy meal of discussion since it's one of the most important topics of our current times.

I think that whenever a government bans someone's speech it should be on solid grounds of hate-speech. By hate-speech I mean talks in public about harming others, proposing limitations of other people's freedom on non-solid grounds for such limitations (meaning, limitations based on ethnicity, gender etc.). It should actually be somewhat obvious when this is happening and when someone is having a speech with reasonable arguments that can be held in a discussion. If someone blatantly say that "those people" should be limited in their freedom as people and there is no reason for it other than things like gender or ethnicity, it's pretty obvious its hate speech. This also applies to when extreme left voices speak about white men without anything other than that they are white men as their argument.

If anyone is unclear on what harmful speech is, it should be obvious that when anyone criticizes a group of people without any other reason than that they are different in ethnicity, gender or culture, it is hate speech. Any criticism against a group of people should be based on solid reasonable arguments that can't be disputed easily.

Let's say a "terrorist group" is being blamed, criticized and disliked by a society. What is the reason? Is it because these people are fighting for rights by having debates and discussions? That they protest by not eating? That they sit outside government buildings and speak out about their situations? If that is the case they are not terrorists and society is blaming this group based on nothing more than hate of this group, therefore hateful and harmful speech about this group is being held by the public and should not be accepted. If they are fighting against society because society is attacking them. If society kills civilians in this group and they are fighting back while the government brands them as terrorists because of this, then, even so, does not equal branding them as terrorists since they act like rebels fighting for their right to live and exist. Then the discussion should reflect this truth of the situations rather than using hate-speech to brand them as lower than society. This form is a way for governments to reduce these groups to a level where society can hate them and therefore win over the public by sheer manipulation. If this group, however, inflict damage and harm by a doctrine of violence, killing and torturing not out of the need to survive as a group, not out of a need to be able to live in peace, but by invading and killing based on religious texts, domination ideas etc. then they are terrorists and should be condemned by society. The form of these groups should inform how we speak about them and inform if our speech is hate-speech and harmful or truthful to the group's nature.

There are situations when things get muddied, but in most cases, it's blatantly easy to spot what is hate-speech and what is not. Not being able to do so means having an inability to deduce reality outside of staining it with personal values not applicable to society as a whole.

So, governments should make laws about hate-speech out of this parameter. Going further than this will infringe on freedom of speech and loosening it will invite a pandemic of racism and hate. As an example, the racism of Trump has made it easier for racist groups to speak publically with their racism. This, in turn, has led to an increase in violence towards minority groups since racism isn't as frowned upon as before. The balance should be obvious on a government level.

However, what is considered ok and not in society should be informed by the people themselves. It's how we move forward as a society. We aren't using certain words anymore since they are considered derogatory against certain groups. This isn't applied by laws and governments, but by culture and the people in order to minimize harm and include everyone into society. Where the line is drawn is set by public discussions.

As an example of something that I believe will be considered unwanted in public speaking because of its regular use in derogatory talk about a group is "CIS men". Its use today is not to describe a regular male whose identity is male in society, which is a fine description to use when talking about genders, but it has instead turned into a derogatory use as a way of turning the tables of hate. Its use is not really used in the way it's intended, or in the way it's supposed to be used, but rather has turned into a popular derogatory word about white men. This word is still accepted today but may become a word that is considered derogatory and harmful to the group of white men and banned for keeping any rational discourse about gender, free of derogatory hate-speech.

Neither of this is censorship. It's not censoring anything since all it does is steering discussions into being rational to the core of the subject matter and not stained with irrational hate between groups or individuals. It should be obvious when limitations of free speech are harmful and become the starting point for totalitarian societies and when there are too few limitations and throws society into a chaos of crime, racism, and hate between groups of people. The result of not enough limitations are pretty obvious, but too many only use totalitarian states as their measurement for free speech, which is a rather limited and narrow point of view.

if we reduce matters of what gives one meaning in life or purpose to a matter of taste or personal whim, then haven't we idiotized the issue of what gives one meaning in life to a simple matter of what I like best or dislike most? — Wallows

Why would meaning or purpose be of divine status when it objectively doesn't exist? Then again, why would we even define trivialities to be the meaning or purpose of our personal lives? If we think of purpose and meaning in life as the single idolized thing to reach in order to feel fulfillment and being able to die with a sense of reaching our life goal, then it is far from being idiotized. Just because the meaning or purpose is personal, doesn't mean it's trivial and if we think of it as trivial, we aren't really thinking of the true meaning or purpose in our lives, but something that's just trivial. If we don't know, we haven't searched for our personal purpose in our life yet.

That when there is a probability of something happening its as if the laws of determinism have been bypassed. Considering that probabilities are not 100% certain at all time, the universe must somehow than be non-deterministic. Meaning, whenever there is a probability involved, there is a proof that the universe is not behaving deterministically. What do you think about this? — Josh Alfred

I think you are viewing determinism through the eyes of a human, meaning that you can't perceive the small causes and effects that in the end define the path of an event. Say we have a large object that's balancing and could fall to either side. We pinpoint a probability of it falling to the left or the right to be 50/50. But this is an illusion. If we would count all details that decide which side it would fall, we would know 100% which side it's going to fall to. Meaning you count in not only it's balanced weight, but changes to the wind a few kilometers away, the movement of earth's core, magnetic field, atmospheric changes of pressure, the side the sun shines on the object propelling it by heat energy and millions, billions of more reasons for it to fall to a specific side. The reason it falls to the left at that very time is very much the result of determinism deciding at 100% probability.

The difference here is that humanity's measurements of probability are limited, while the determinism of the entire universe affecting the object is solid. We just can't measure things to such an extreme point that we can predict it and for our existence, it's such an infinite calculation that it's easier to pinpoint a probability of 50 / 50 than trying to accurately calculate it.

If light had a conscious perception of time, it wouldn't even notice the brief time of our universe's existence.

A classic standoff is the freedom vs equality debate. It is a matter of taste/values/preference as to whether one sees freedom as more important than equality. If one fins oneself arguing over a political measure it can save a lot of time if one first tries to ascertain what values are driving the two sides. If they are different, it's a waste of time discussing it. — andrewk

It's only a waste of time if the discussion is about pitching these values against each other. One could argue that you could do a normal dialectic about freedom vs equality to try and find the position that is for the best of the people. A value-driven discussion based on what values the singular perspective of each candidate has is pointless, but politicians should have a discussion about what is best for the people. This, of course rarely, if ever, happens. They appeal to those with similar values to be elected, often falling further down into becoming demagogs.

But a true political discussion about what is best for the population should be a philosophical dialectic that reaches the most rational and best solution for the people. Doing that could pitch the freedom vs equality into a dialectic to reach the best balance between them. As it stands, almost all ideological ideas fall apart at the extreme end and most attempts through a demagog to balance them only reach a chaotic form that is neither balanced or optimal for any party.

A proper discussion between two political standpoints or values is possible if people detach emotion from these subjects.

I feel as though that when it comes to matters like the establishing meaning in life, that those issues have become a matter of 'taste'. That is to say, the issue has degraded or has been subjugated into a matter of preference. We don't talk about it because it's for us to decide what gives us meaning in life.

So, if we accept this now common notion that meaning is derived from tastes and preferences, which ought not to be disputed, then what? — Wallows

There's overwhelming logical rationality to the conclusion that an objective meaning of life doesn't exist. So that leaves automatically the subject of life's meaning to the subjective.

What we can talk about is a group of meaningful meaning-of-life-subjects without judging them to not have meaning, since we cannot collectively decide on the value. But we could gather a set of the most common valued meanings in people's lives and draw a framework on what seems meaningful to people within the context of the zeitgeist. Also transitioning and listing valued meanings throughout history might be an interesting framework for driving forces people have through their lives.

Let's say we pinpoint some of these that could be considered very common:
- Finding love
- Have children
- Finding comfort in a balanced life
- Pleasures of social life

And so on.

We could try and find common denominators to these common meanings. Like, "feeling good" or "understanding life".

In essence, there are interesting things to be found within this topic as long as it's handled through the lens of subjective perspective and a statistical point of view rather than trying to find an objective meaning of life or a meaning that is external to the subject.

Yes by energy I mean the life force if you want of the human being. The soul being a certain form of energy it can't be destroyed or created but only transferred. Reincarnation could be possible (the transfer of energy from one body to another hence life after death). — Paul24

This is not an argument for reincarnation. You say that our energy is our life force, it's not, it's just energy, as any other. It has no consciousness and no information about our identity is passed on through it. Your argument fails within the first sentence since your premise isn't true, it's a misunderstanding of what energy is.

Further, you draw the conclusion that because you believe that energy is the soul, therefore the soul is being transformed after death. This is false since your first premise about energy being the soul is false.

Then you conclude that reincarnation could be possible because the soul, which is energy is transferred. This conclusion is based on two false premises.

You need true premises in order to conclude something to be true or even inductive. Energy is not the soul. You need to prove that there is a soul first, just saying energy is the soul is like saying energy is an apple, therefore we become an apple when we die. There is no connection since you conclude energy to be the soul based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what energy is.

Establishing the premise that energy is conservative and that the soul is a certain form of energy, could it be possible that life really do exist after death. — Paul24

No. This is a misunderstanding of how energy works. If you use your body energy to slide your palms together, the energy becomes heat energy and this energy is not part of your consciousness. Why would then the energy of the human body become a life after death? There is no support of this conclusion. The energy that leaves the body after death is just heat that disperses into the environment.

I do tend to answer yes to the question. — Paul24

Why? You haven't put forth an argument that is deductively solid so why answer yes when nothing supports it? I would like you to do a proper argument for this conclusion and if it isn't holding together you shouldn't answer yes to the question. Otherwise, it's not philosophy but spirituality and religion.

Hitler is probably the ultimate example of someone making and living their own meaning in a large way. He had a whole ideology, architecture, music,gained power, boosted his ego. But it was all a dangerous fantasy. — Andrew4Handel

It was a corruption of Nietzsche's ideas. And it's an unnecessarily loaded question fallacy that muddies the argument of creating your own meaning in life. He was a lunatic with too much power, I fail to see how it relates to the broader aspect of finding meaning in life. Also, I could argue that there isn't clear that he followed his own meaning, he might not have even thought of his life in the sense of "meaning" or "purpose" but just following his power-hungry nature and urge to be in control.

On the " make your own meaning" idea you have no grounds to criticize anyone's meaning making however destructive and murderous. — Andrew4Handel

Yes you can. You are mixing together "meaning in life" with morality and ethics. We can discuss ethics and criticise someone's ethics and morality, it has nothing to do with meaning in life.

This is one other reasons i think the claim to make you own meaning is a triviality. It is like a platitude but it doesn't explore what the consequences of the claim would be. — Andrew4Handel

Creating your own meaning in life gives you a reason to exist in your life. It has nothing to do with ethics and morality, it has to do with giving a sense of balance and foundation for your life. If the reaction is to dispute this in order to try and find an objective meaning, based on confusing it with discussions about ethics and morality, that is a fallacy. They are not the same thing. There's also nothing that prevents there to be a discussion about a person's meaning in life. It's a foundation that many therapists and clinical psychologists can use in order to balance a person who's clearly in a bad place.

If someone has a meaning in life that is clearly dangerous to others and/or themselves, it can absolutely be challenged. But it seems you are making the argument that when encountering this, it's about applying a universal objective meaning that can override this person's own meaning. But that is not what it's about. Just as therapists and clinical psychologists work with dangerous ideas and sense of meaning, they work with balancing values of life in order to change the dangerous meaning of life into something that isn't destructive to the self or others.

You can't use a loaded question or slippery slope fallacy to dispute this. Just because you find your own meaning in life, it doesn't mean it opens the door to dangerous ideas. If you already have a damaged moral and is dangerous to others and yourself, THAT is what defines your actions, not the meaning you create out of it. You are using the notion that the meaning itself comes before corrupted morals when instead the created meaning is the result of that corrupted moral.

Hitler didn't create meaning and followed it and therefore did horrible things. The corrupted morals came before the meaning. I think you are confusing "meaning of life" with ethics and even so, it has nothing to do with any objective meaning.

The argument is essentially simple:
- Objective meaning doesn't exist (no rational argument proves there to be one).
- Without a sense of meaning, you have no sense of purpose.
- Without purpose, you become indifferent to living (and suicide becomes an option).
Meaning and purpose must then be created in order to have a solid foundation for living.

This has nothing to do with ethics and morals, it's a point about living a balanced life. It's an idea about how to navigate a pointless world. You can corrupt yourself with religious rules to feel a sense of purpose and meaning, but for those who are rational and doesn't accept fairy tales as a foundation for life, they need another set of guidelines. Because there is no objective meaning, there has to be a sense of meaning, in order to give life a sense of purpose. You find something to live for.

So if this is about finding something to live for in a meaningless universe, it cannot be countered with "it's false because of some people becoming morally dangerous". There is no link between these two and ethics has nothing to do with how to handle the topic of meaning in life. A bad, morally currupted person is not an argument against personal meaning in life.

The biological process of renewal of cells does not erase the information of the previous cells. It's essentially a copy. If you use the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, it describes how damaged parts get replaced with new parts. That's not how the body works. When a cell gets replaced it's essentially a perfect copy with healed parts. This process gets slower and worse over the course of a life and that's why we get old.

There is also nothing that says we are the same person over a period of time. We are constantly changing, based on the genetic makeup and our experiences that change our neurological makeup. But that doesn't mean it's metaphorical. Our body has a genetic blueprint that is informing our cells to renew cells according to what is established, so even if we renew all our cells, it's not happening in an instant and it's not replaced by anything new, only copies based on solid specifications. These specifications can be modified in order to adapt, like when we get a tan because our body needs to build up protection against UV light.

However, the neurological makeup does not change just because the cells change. The connections that make up the memories we have are still there and it's the neurological connections that create our consciousness, not cells. So even if our cells go through a process of dying and copying, the neurons stay in the formation that is necessary for our consciousness. The reason people start forgetting or having problems at an older age is that the neurons start to disintegrate when information becomes harder to process. Nourishment to the brain and the paths where information takes between neurons start to break down, new paths are harder to create, especially if there are little external stimuli.

It's an interesting theory and it's right in a sense but fundamentally it's wrong. — Jordan B Peterson

This is why Peterson has weak arguments. He frequently push things like "it's fundamentally wrong" while at the same time point out that "he is right in a sense". He muddies his arguments into a complete mess and that's why people compare him to Deepak Chopra. He is a brilliant psychologist, but the biggest problem is that he is an apologist and he muddies his own points by combining utter nonsense with findings that are truly scientific. That's why people have a hard time knowing whether what he says is based on science or his own ideological beliefs. Like when he pointed out that there are no real atheists since a true atheist is a murderer like in Dostoyevsky's writings. Utter bullshit. I've spent many hours listening to him but also listening to criticism against him and analyses of his rhetoric. It's dangerous to not have a critical mind while listening to him since he pushes his own personal ideas and convictions into areas of science, mixing them together so that those who aren't skeptics fall right into accepting his ideas. For a person who regularly warns about the mechanics of totalitarian states and their ways of manipulation, he uses similar mechanics to sell his books. It becomes clear that he isn't the brightest in the room when he gets pitched against other intellectuals in a discussion.

Today I would like to discuss with you a very delicate but interesting subject that has been on everybody's mind since the beginning of mankind. The purpose of life. So I wanted to ask you this. What is the purpose of life? I tend to agree with the premise that there is a purpose to every form of life from microscopic beings to macroscopic ones. This brings me to my second question: should life exist without purpose? Let me explain a little bit. Life is a cycle and everything in it contributes in order to maintain the universal order of things. Can life exist without purpose? I do not think so but I'm open for debate. — StreetlightX

@Paul24:

There is no purpose to life. It's the consequence of billions after billions of random dead matter clashing together into chemical reactions until organic matter developed. Later, that organic matter developed simple functions that would guide it into existing with least resistance to the environment. From that, the evolutionary process continued this process over the course of billions of years and the organic matter developed into larger and more complex beings.

There is no purpose to this, it's simply a process, like how beech rocks form shapes after millions of years of water crashing into them, their form does not have a purpose, it's just a result of matter over time.

The premise that there is a purpose to life is not a premise that can be used in a reasonable argument because it has no truth-value. If the conclusion is that there is purpose to life and the premise is that there is purpose to life, that is a fallacy.

Therefore, the question of whether or not life should exist without purpose becomes a non-question since a purpose hasn't been proven to exist in the first place.

A universal order is not equal to the process of evolutionary cycles. The universe will continue indifferent to our planet being blown up or not, since it has no agent of will. It doesn't care, it can't care, it's a dead place of matter without consciousness.

You can't think about the purpose of life when you haven't proven there to be one in the first place. So far, thousands of years of philosophy have not been able to prove there to be any purpose. All reasonable arguments tend to come to the same conclusion; there is none. The notion that there is a purpose is born out of a religious legacy that fails to present a logical argument for that purpose and instead only requires faith.

So the philosophical discussion is at a standstill since everyone is still debating if there is any purpose or not. It's an irrelevant question when so little points to there being any purpose or meaning at all. The question that should be discussed is rather; how should we live and find meaning in our lives when there is no objective or universal purpose or meaning to our lives? That doesn't mean finding a universal meaning, it means finding a purpose that is meaningful to ourselves as humans.

My personal sense of meaning is a pursuit of knowledge in order to find control over the uncontrollable universe. It's not a universal meaning, it's not something that has any purpose outside of my own values as a person. It is meaningful to me as a person and that's the limit of any kind of meaning and purpose in life.

There is the value problem in meaning. Hitler seemed to have a lot of meaning and purpose in his life to the point he controlled a large army and several countries. How can one persons meaning be superior to another if we just have to make our own meaning?

Somehow Hitler needed an alternative source of meaning , purpose and satisfaction. — Andrew4Handel

Why are you putting one person's meaning against another? Hitler might have felt a sense of meaning for himself, but why should that be set to a standard meaning for all?

To find your own meaning of life requires you to find it for yourself. It's not about finding a meaning that applies to all others. That is objective meaning and it doesn't exist, neither as a grand meaning nor a found meaning for all.

Evolution seeks to explain characteristics or attributes we have in terms of evolutionary usefulness. These are expected to determine some or all of our characteristics.
There would be no point in the theory if it didn't meaningfully explain anything. — Andrew4Handel

I think that a definition of the word "meaning" would be needed because I don't see any meaning in evolution. As I said, it's a function that, as you said, explain the characteristics or attributes of usefulness. The process and function of the evolutionary changes over time is just what it is, there is no further meaning to it.

What I mean is that when we talk about "objective meaning", that meaning is essentially transcending beyond the simple function or characteristics of something. The "meaning of life" means that there is some meaning to all our existence beyond just existing or having life. If the "meaning" of a flower is to be yellow, that is not really a meaning, it's a function or a characteristic, it has no real value and is just what it is, it's yellow, no meaning. Same goes for evolution, the evolutionary process has no meaning, it is a function, it is a process, but it is what it is.

Objective meaning means that there is a reason for our existence, beyond of just existing. In terms of a God creating us, could maybe mean that we have a meaning for that Gods plan that we don't know about. But any rational person who wants to create a logical and reasonable argument for the meaning of life would not find one since it demands proving there's a God that has a meaning set out for us. Without any specific meaning to life, there is none and we simply just are.

That's why all arguments for a "meaning of life" falls flat every time since it requires there to be an agent of that meaning to apply it to our life. If there is no agent of meaning, there is no meaning. The argument for a "meaning of life" is infected by religion and its fallacies in reasoning.

There is no objective meaning.

I think evolution is a claim of objective meaning where evolutionary theorist seek to explain life from a fixed or lawful paradigm. — Andrew4Handel

Evolution is just the function of our existence. It's the form we have in the universe, just as a star convert hydrogen into helium and later dies, the evolution of biological entities on earth goes through evolutionary steps to further change its function in the environment. There's no meaning to this, it's only a function. It also has no meaning just because scientists came to this conclusion, the scientific evidence points to it, it simply is. What is the meaning of a function? What is the meaning of the sun's ability to transform hydrogen into helium? Detach your own existence from the universe and you realize it has no objective meaning. People get clouded in our human sense of existing and it shrouds our ability to think beyond ourselves. We are nothing more than matter able to think about ourselves as matter, all meaning is our invention, objective meaning is non-existent.

Got to go. The corpse is waiting. — Bitter Crank

Not to be blunt or insensitive, but that's a very meta framing of your "nothing has objective meaning"-comment. :sweat:

The question is, if there was an objective meaning of life, what would it be? Please entertain the question instead of rejecting it outright. — matt

How can I entertain a question that is essentially impossible to answer? I can answer with what I might think is a subjective meaning of life, a meaning that I personally think is worthwhile in life, but answering what is an objective meaning of life is a pointless question when there isn't any objective meaning.

To entertain the question, you must first accept that there is an objective meaning of life, but something we don't know. But as soon as you try and make a rational argument for doing so, the question falls apart into absurdity.

So how can we answer a question that is pointless? It becomes trivial nonsense without philosophical weight. The true question that can be discussed would be... can there be any objective meaning? And so far we've had thousands of years of philosophers failing to find there to be any.

Say there is a 50/50 chance of some event occurring. How does that probability factor affect whether or not the universe is deterministic? — Josh Alfred

What event has a 50/50 chance that is purely random? If you flip a coin, all the parameters of flipping the coin determine the outcome. Just because you as a human cannot perceive all the reasons for the outcome, doesn't mean its 50/50

The only place where there's a 50/50 chance is down at a quantum level, but there are no scientific theories that determine that the quantum level has any impact on large scale events being randomized. The randomness at a quantum level has an almost infinite non-effect on anything at larger scales. As soon as it scales up, the outcomes become determined by preceding events. The quantum randomness seems to be related to how matter and energy become defined, not outcomes of events in time.

So there is nothing that can really be defined as a 50/50 chance and therefore there aren't any randomness to affect the nature of determinism.

However, we run into interesting questions if we start using things like the ANU quantum generator
http://qrng.anu.edu.au/index.php
If you choose based on the outcome of quantum generation, you are essentially deciding based on pure randomness. But then again, the choice to do so is deterministic, the choice on how to do something, to do something and so on is still deterministic. And further on, the numbers that come up are defined by a computer choosing the randomness, so the determinism is still in place. The computer chooses a set of numbers, why not double that set? Use half a set? So it becomes, even at this level, hard to determine if it's dislocated from determinism or if it's an illusion of being free of determinism.

But it's intriguing to roll a quantum dice for the choices you make during a day. If you use that dice for all the choices during a day, you are essentially still following determinism in which two choices you have to choose by, but hacking determinism in which outcome that happens.

But it's still not hacking determinism into splitting the universal determinism, even though it's the grandest illusion of bypassing it for us humans.