Indeed. But others judge your 'meaning' or 'value' to the world or to their individual lives. — universeness

How is this any different from saying that others judge your 'meaning/value' based on your effects on the world and their individual lives? Meaning and one's judgement of it are mutually exclusive. Meaning exists where ever causes leave effects. Any judgement of those effects is based on one's individual goals. So in judging some meaning to be bad or good, they are projecting their own wants and needs on to meaning that already exists as inherent in the universe

I do think all humans seek meaning — universeness

Right. So meaning is something that exists prior to seeking it as it is something that is looked for and found in nature, and not created by the mind. Not all meaning is useful to one's life, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist apart from your own wants and needs.

It is your issue not mine. — Jackson

No, it's yours as you are the one that thinks that value and meaning are objective. If that were the case then a serial killer's values and meanings would be shared by you.

That sentence made no sense. — Jackson

I'm no longer interested in what you think.

It's a personal value measure, yes, it's subjective, yes. Seeking personal meaning may be objectively true. I suppose you would have to see how many dissent from that before you could declare 'seeking meaning' to be objective. I don't think it's useless to ask others about their measures of meaning as it can help you judge what kind of relationship you might establish with them. — universeness

If 'seeking meaning' is seeking value then what makes a life valuable if not the effects it has on the world?

Why would I want to do that? — Jackson

Why wouldn't you want to do that?

You edited your post where you seemed to disagree that value is subjective. I can't have an intellectual discussion with someone who changes their posts in the middle of the discussion.

That is just your subjective opinion. — Jackson

All you have to do is watch the news to see that the value of human life varies from individual to individual. Why don't you go ask a serial killer what the meaning of life is.

I think you do not know what cause and effect means. You confuse cause with meaning. I think you would flunk an intro philosophy class. Your questions are formal and show lack of understanding. — Jackson

Ad hominems and intellectual dishonesty are not an argument against anything that I have said. You would flunk a class in logic.

Have you not suggested an answer yourself. — universeness

That depends on how you define meaning. If meaning is the relationship between cause and effect then meaning is innate to the universe. In asking what the meaning of life is you are asking what caused life to exist and what purpose (which is just another type of cause as a prediction of future states based on one's goal in the present (final cause)) it has. — Harry Hindu

Meaning is a human measure of significance. A measure of profundity, which has a range from low to high, small to big! — universeness

Then meaning is equivalent to value? Each human places varying degrees of value on different things, therefore meaning cannot be something objective and asking others what the meaning of life is would be useless. You would never need to ask the question of others.

If you answered it point me to where you answered it. If you think asking questions is a form of hostility then maybe you shouldn't participate on a philosophy forum.

I didn't ask why people ask it. I'm asking what they are saying, or assuming, when asking. Again, what is meaning?

Not every meaning is profound. Most meanings are simple and trivial. In asking what the meaning of life is, the asker tends to believe they are asking a profound question so they expect a profound answer, but this isn't necessarily the case.

Why don't you try answering the question about what people are asking when they are asking what the meaning of life is. What is meaning?

I'm more interested in why you don't think that, not that you actually don't think it.

So what is it that you think people are asking when they ask what the meaning of life is if not what caused life and what effects the existence of life brings to the world?

The subject is third-person when referred to in the third person. — Wayfarer

And it stands to reason that the subject is first-person when referred to in the first person (you and I). The point being that a subject is an object - a person. The perspective from which one refers to a subject does not matter at all. I just don't understand your issue of reification of the subject when you are the one that has defined a subject as an object, or a thing.

Other people are only known via our "first-person" experiences - which is typically visual, auditory, tactile information. Our own self is known via our attention looping back on itself in attending itself, or in attending the information as information and not attending what the information is about like other people or the world.

What is an experience? Would it be fair to define experience as the information of the subject/object/person relative to the world?
— Harry Hindu

I don't know if it can be defined as that, but certainly experience implies the subject for whom, or to whom, it occurs. — Wayfarer

Well, you are the one that linked the subject (an object as a person) with experience. I thought you had an idea of what you were talking about when using the term, "experience". If you don't know what it is then how can you say that it implies the subject for whom it occurs?

To be fair, I think the question refers to there being no innate meaning to the universe. — Jackson

That depends on how you define meaning. If meaning is the relationship between cause and effect then meaning is innate to the universe. In asking what the meaning of life is you are asking what caused life to exist and what purpose (which is just another type of cause as a prediction of future states based on one's goal in the present (final cause)) it has.

I'll put you down for "I don't understand the question." — Tate

No offense, but I was looking for the thoughts of people who are familiar with this particular issue. — Tate

We are familiar with the issue. It's just we've solved the issue. It's not our problem you don't like, or understand, the solution. If you can't answer my question, then maybe you should put yourself down as not understanding the question or the issue. It sounds like you're regurgitating a mass delusion that human existence is meaningless.

By subject, I refer to the subject of experience. Conventionally, the person, the being, to whom experiences occur. — Wayfarer

Then the subject is an object, like a person.

What is an experience? Would it be fair to define experience as the information of the subject/object/person relative to the world? For instance, the visual experience of the world for a person appears as if the world is located relative to the person's eyes.

When you observe another human being - call it their "brain activity" or behavior - what do you think is going on? Your notion seems to verge on solipsism.

Your act of observing is, of course, your own subjective experience. But where do the things you observe originate from? Your own mind? An uber-mind? Or do you just refuse to think about it?

If your brain/body is an illusion, why that particular illusion? Why is it universally shared?

I think a great deal of your position hinges on whether you think other humans exist, what they are, and how you know. — Real Gone Cat

All excellent questions.

I'm certainly not advocating solipsism. If the external world is an illusion, then how and why this particular illusion and how does a solipstic mind come to even imagine such a thing as an external world?

The objects that visually appear in conscious originate from the causal interaction of light, the object and my sensory system. The relationship between cause and effect is information. The mind is the effect of these prior causes as well as the cause of subsequent effects, like learning. Information exists wherever causes leave effects and its information all the way down.

Neither mind nor matter are fundamental. Information is.

Illusions are misinterpretations of sensory data. Mirages do not disappear once we realize that they are not pools of water but an interaction between light and heat. What we experience when seeing a mirage is what one would expect given the way light behaves. What we experience is real and it is the interpretation of what we see that makes the difference between reality and illusion. The mind as information is fundamental and the solid, physical properties that objects seem to take are the result of the way light and the objects behave and interpreted by the mind.

The rate at which the working memory if our minds process the external information is relative to the rate, or frequency, at which the events in the world change. Slow change relative the processing rate of the mind makes these other processes appear as static, solid, unchanging objects. Faster processes appear as a blur of action in our visual working memory. So the relative rate of change between or mental processing and other processes will skew our view of the world in interpreting the world as full of non-changing objects that perform actions and behaviors. It's all causal relations (information) or process, or relations, all the way down, not physical objects all the way down. That is the illusion.

Does a subject or being have uniform properties?
— Harry Hindu

That is also a question that tends to reify the subject. — Wayfarer

Like I said, YOU already reified THE subject by giving it a name, "subject". I'm merely asking what you mean by YOUR use of the scribble, "subject". What do you intend for me to understand by your use of the scribble?

What is meaningless about human existence?
— Harry Hindu

That it's all for nothing. — Tate

How is human existence "all for nothing"? My wife and children's and friends' existence is not all for nothing. Their existence everything to me, and if one's existence is everything to just one, then their existence cannot be all for nothing.

In computer science it is known that it takes more computational power to simulate a computer system than the computer system itself has; typically, much more. I think this principle can be generalized: — hypericin

This isn't exactly true or useful. While it does take more power to emulate a system, you can fully emulate an older system on a more powerful system. Just look at MAME the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator that emulates vintage arcade machines and vintage home computers and consoles.

Emulating the the system that you are currently using on the same system is pointless.

1. What causes a turn from distraction to facing the meaninglessness of human existence? — Tate

What is meaningless about human existence? Maybe it's the conception of meaninglessness that is the distraction from just getting on with life and creating your own purposes and meanings.

In addition to what Banno said, in the civilized part of the two Americas, the left are experiencing a golden age — Streetlight

If it's so golden in the South then why are there millions migrating from the South to the North?

Again I refer to the problem implied in the 'reification of the subject'. To reify is to 'make into a thing', from the Latin 'res' (same term as used in 'res cogitans'). When you look for such a thing, there is nothing to be found, no 'invisible extra thing' - but at the same time, the reality of the subject is implicit in every act and utterance. (That is a topic much more discussed and debated in European philosophy than English-speaking, see this article).

Does a subject or being have uniform properties?
— Harry Hindu

That is also a question that tends to reify the subject. — Wayfarer

But it's not. It is your own use of language that reifies subject and being. Are subject and being simply scribbles you've put on this screen, or do the scribbles refer to something that isn't scribbles? If the latter, then what is it the scribbles refer to? Or are you saying that there is no distinction between subject and non-subject? If that is what you're saying then you haven't actually said anything useful. It seems more like how Christians explain that their God is undefinable and not a thing that can be accessed by science in an effort to protect the idea of God from being falsified. You're doing the same thing here in regards to subject and being.

You say this extra thing cannot be found and then say it is implicit in every act and utterance. Then subject and being are the acts of humans?

Yes. What's wrong with: brain activity is sensations? — bongo fury

When observing another's brain activity, how can you tell if the visual sensation you experience of another's brain activity is your own brain activity or theirs?

The issue is that other people's brain activity can only be observed via your sensations. If the sensations are an illusion then so is your understanding of brain activity. You don't experience brain activity when observing your own sensations. You only experience sensations of which your observations of other people's brain activity is composed of. When observing others' sensations you experience brain activity. So there is a contradiction that needs to be resolved. It seems to me that brain activity is secondary to sensations as my own sensations are not composed of brain activity. It's the other way around.

I find myself in the unnaccustomed position of agreeing with you. :yikes: — Wayfarer

I think most of our disagreements were the result of talking past each other.

(Also note the distinction I made earlier about the difference between the philosophical and everyday use of the term 'substance' i.e. it means something very different in philosophy than in ordinary language.) — Wayfarer

We can use both meanings without any contradiction. We just have to make sure we're not talking past each other when using the term. So we can dispense with the term, "substance" and simply talk about subjects, being and material with uniform properties. Does a subject or being have uniform properties?

I take the question of how things are to be subservient to the question of what to do. We only need to know how things are so far as it helps working out what to do.

Meaning as use and all that. It's what one does. — Banno

Here you are only explaining how things are - that how things are is subservient to the question of what to do. Meaning as use and all that and it's what one does is explaining how things are.

It seems that it's the other way around - that what one does is subservient to how things are. How things are can place limits on what you can do or say. Try "flying" out of a 10 story window.

It also seems to me that there was a how things are for billions of years before there was anyone that did anything, unless you're arguing for the existence of God.

You can only explain how things are - that is what one does (with language). And that is how things are. What we are all doing here is trying to explain how things are. Even in saying, "it's what one does" is explaining how things are. What is "It's" in the sentence, "It's what one does" if not "How things are is" what one does.

Seems to me you have made your position very clear, too. For you, mind is a different substance to the other things around us. That leaves wide open the problem of how mind interacts with those other substances - the basic problem for dualism.

The alternative is that mind is not a substance, but something that substance does. — Banno

I would disagree with the assertion that mind is a different substance to the other things around us. I would agree with the assertion that the way the other things appear via the mind is not how they are - substance-wise. They appear as solid, physical, material objects, but that is just how they are modeled. The model is not solid, physical or material. It is informational.

"The current Republican Party is a clear and present danger to the USA"

important proceeding.
— creativesoul

seriousness and the future implications of all that?
— creativesoul

How corrupt has our nation become if a violent coup cannot wake them from their slumber.
— Jackson

Yes, and what exactly have you two done about it? Beyond being outraged from what your reading/seeing? — Xtrix

It appears to me that Creativesoul is itching for a new Civil War in the USA.

Why does the trophy say, "Agent Smith's Lower Expectations Award"?

So you use "suffering" and "pain" interchangeably yet the latter is involuntary and the former is voluntary. Are the Stoics, for example, mistaken that 'we suffer from how we deal with pain' and not principly from pain itself? — 180 Proof

It seems to me that suffering is the awareness of being in pain. I'm not sure if any of it is voluntary. We have an injury, we have pain and we have an awareness of the injury via pain. Pain is the information while we are the informed and the injury is what we are informed of. There should be a difference in behavior between a p-zombie burning its hand on a hot stove vs. a human burning its hand on a hot stove because the p-zombie would never be informed its hand is burning on the hot stove.

Then what is it that suffers?
— Harry Hindu

And the good question award goes to none other than Harry Hindu! — Agent Smith

You misjudge me. I'm not looking for an award. I'm looking for an answer.

However, this realization, speaking only for myself, doesn't diminish the suffering I have to bear. I don't feel better about someone belittling me in public just because I happen to know that I am in illusion, an accident of circumstances, having no real essence and so on. In short, there is no self, doesn't necessarily imply there is no suffering. — Agent Smith

Then what is it that suffers?

So, you think that suffering can exist without awareness of it? I don’t think so. I think that suffering is possible exclusively in proportion to awareness: if awareness is 100, suffering is 100, if 50, 50, if awareness is 0, suffering is 0. The medical practice of anaestesia is scientific evidence of it. So, there is absolutely no difference between “actual suffering” and “awareness of suffering”. Suffering without awareness can produce body reactions, but these body reactions are not suffering: when only the body is suffering, nobody is suffering: when doctors are operating your body and you are totally under anaestesia, nobody is suffering. We can see that animals have degree of awareness as well and it is possible to practice anaestesia on animals as well. This seems to me scientific evidence hard to deny. — Angelo Cannata

If I break my arm, I am aware of the pain. In being aware of the pain, I am aware of my injury. You seem to be saying that I suffer because I am aware of the pain, not because I am in pain. To say that when the body is suffering no one is suffering, are you saying that you are not your body? What is it that you are referring to when you say, "you"? Are you referring to your body, brain, mind, soul, or what?

How can you discuss the viewpoint of materialism without discussing it's validity? In discussing materialism you are inherently discussing its validity. :roll:

Absolute presuppositions can change with changing knowledge. — Clarky

This is not a discussion on the merits of materialism. — Clarky

You missed the point. In discussing materialism you inevitably get to the point of realizing it has no merit.

If Chalmer’s hard problem of consciousness does not exist, then there is no difference between a living human body suffering and a computer built to imitate all happenings and behaviours of suffering. — Angelo Cannata

It's not really about suffering, but our awareness of suffering. In what ways are we aware of suffering and how does that differ from actual suffering? What form does the awareness of suffering take as opposed to actual suffering? It seems that there can be one without the other. For instance, I can be aware of your suffering but not suffering myself. As a matter of fact, some people can take pleasure in others' suffering.

The observation of others' suffering takes a different form than my own suffering. From my perspective, others' suffering is a "physical" state (ie they cry, moan, pout, etc,). For myself, it's a mental state. I don't need to be aware of the "physical" state of my body to know that I am suffering. I can close my eyes and still be aware of my own suffering. This is not the case for others' suffering and this is essentially the hard problem - which is more about awareness of states-of-affairs and what form that awareness takes, and why it is different to be aware of others' suffering as opposed to our own suffering.

First focus - the discussion will take place from a materialist/physicalist/realist point of view. — Clarky

The purpose of this thread is not to discuss the validity of a materialist viewpoint. — Clarky

Then the point of this thread is to preach to the choir?

When I was a Christian, I didn't seriously think about the view of being a Christian. I just was, and accepted the idea that God exists without seriously thinking about what that meant. Once I began to seriously take on the view and asking deeper questions about this viewpoint in an attempt to better understand and defend this viewpoint did I come to understand that what I believed simply didn't fit with more objective observations. So it was only in delving deeper into the view that I began to reject the view.

Second focus - For the purposes of this discussion, we live before 1905, when the universe was still classical and quantum mechanics was unthinkable. I see the ideas we come up with in this discussion as a baseline we can use in a later discussion to figure out how things change when we consider quantum mechanics.

Third focus - We’ll stick as much as possible with issues related to a scientific understanding of reality. Physics in particular. — Clarky

Right. So for the purpose of this discussion, we accept the view that macro-sized "physical" objects are the interaction between smaller "physical" objects, and that those smaller "physical" objects are themselves composed of the interactions of even smaller "physical" objects. If "physical" objects are really the interactions of smaller objects, then it seems to me that it doesn't make any sense to say that it's "physical" all the way down. It appears that using a pre-relativity physicists viewpoint actually shows that the world is not "physical" but relational all the way down.

The sensation of depth perception would be the "map" your brain has given you so that you can be aware of your position in 3D space and make split-second decisions related to that. It is not the neurons in your optic nerve, but it is the neurons in the conscious part of your brain. The information from your optic nerves has been compounded into a more-useful form of information that is intended to be used for navigating by your attention. You are the attention. You are the navigating being performed. — Bird-Up

Then when you look at other people and see bodies and brains (via their MRI brain scan) then bodies and brains are part of the map, not the territory.

Information would then have to be explained for how it can "generate a feeling" of subjectivity. — schopenhauer1

Information doesn't generate anything but more information via some process of causation. So the feeling is just information, as feelings inform you of something. The feeling is subjective because it's a relation between you and what the feeling is about. The feeling would be objective if it didn't include information about yourself in some way. Every feeling or sensation includes information about you and about what you are observing, which makes it subjective. This fits with how we define objective views as being a view from nowhere, or a view independent of some observer, or information independent or absent of information about the observer.

The kinds of things I have listed as knowledge cannot be seriously doubted, let alone discovered to have been wrong. — Janus

Like...?

So you're saying that you've never held an idea that you though could not be seriously doubted, yet only to discover later that you were wrong?

Sounds like you're saying that you've never been wrong in your life.

I'd say the human experience is 0% objective and 100% subjective. We are completely dependent on the information being supplied to us by our brain. That's why I consider objective reality to be an abstract idea. The best we can do, is to gain consensus about what is real by comparing our experience with others. But we can never truly prove that objective things actually exist. We strongly-suspect objectivity. — Bird-Up

Youi just explained how the world is for "we", as in more than just you. You just explained a state of the world in objective terms. How could you ever know what it is like for others if you are stuck in your subjectivity?

Also, is your mind part of the world? Do you have direct access to your mind and can communicate to others the states of your mind? And is your description factual despite what others might believe? In describing the state of your conscious mind, you are describing an objective state-of-affairs of the world - no different than describing any other state-of-affairs. We are able to get at actual states-of-affairs in the world (objectivity) via our subjective information. We just have to separate the information about ourselves from the equation.

The sensation of depth perception would be the "map" your brain has given you so that you can be aware of your position in 3D space and make split-second decisions related to that. It is not the neurons in your optic nerve, but it is the neurons in the conscious part of your brain. The information from your optic nerves has been compounded into a more-useful form of information that is intended to be used for navigating by your attention. You are the attention. You are the navigating being performed. — Bird-Up

There you go again describing the world in an objective manner - as in the state-of-affairs that is the case not only for yourself, but for me and everyone else too. How did you come to acquire this objective information if not subjectively?

How do neurons create sensations in the first place? You keep talking about neurons and optic nerves, but you only experience those things in observing other people's mental states, not your own. Do you need to look at an MRI scan of your own brain to know your mental state? Why or why not?