Exactly how does this contradict what I said? — hypericin

As I pointed out, all you need is a more powerful information processing system to simulate another system that has less information. Your argument is invalid because you dont know if our universe contains all possible information. You just dont know how much information actually exists. Our universe could be a fraction of the total information so a larger system could actually be simulating our universe.

I never said that. Plainly from the perspective of a subject, myself, other beings appear in some sense as objects, but we do not regard other beings as objects, which is why we refer to them with personal pronouns rather than as ‘it’ or ‘thing’. — Wayfarer

Language habits left over from when humans thought of themselves as special and separate from nature.

(For that matter, reflect on why humans and some of the higher animals are called ‘beings’.) — Wayfarer

When did we start calling chimps and dolphins "beings"? Who have you heard say that? I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just wondering about the evolution of the word, "being".

Philosophy has long been aware of the paradox that we ourselves are subjects of experience, but are also objects in the eyes of other subjects. — Wayfarer

What makes something both a subject and object and not just an object? Which came first? Are subjects dependent upon their accompanying objects existence? Is a subject a part, or a fraction, of their accompanying object or does the subject exhaust what it is to be the object?

Does a walk exist? Does a cartwheel exist? Does a backflip exist?

Our language no doubt attempts to abstract actions from the extant being that performs them. But at no point should we take this to mean there is an actual, existing distinction between doer and deed. They are like the morning and evening star, one and the same. — NOS4A2

I wasn't trying to separate dream from dreamer. I was pointing out that if you can talk about it must exist. The manner in which it exists is irrelevant. You, as the doer, are dependent upon other things for your existence just as your dreams' existence are dependent upon your existence. The Earth is the doer and you are the deed.

Your body and mind are just as much a deed as a doer. One might even say that the deed of living and the doer (your body/mind) are one and the same.

I exist. I experience. But it doesn’t follow that something called “experience” exists. — NOS4A2

I exist. I dream. Do dreams exist?

It follows from the idea that people are attempting to communicate sonething when they use words. If what you are talking about doesn't exist then what are you talking about?

Still waiting for your proof. — Jackson

I have shown that the proof is in the way people use the word, "meaning" in that they are referring to a causal relationship. I think that universeness's mentioning of "legacy" and how one's actions affect the world and other people support this.

I have asked you what you believe others are referring to when they use the word, "meaning" and I'm still waiting on that.

The OP was suggesting that life was meaningless. I think even the simple acrimony that discussion about the meaning of life can cause is itself strong evidence that living a life is anything but meaningless and that legacy is very important to many, if not most people.
— universeness
A legacy is essentially the effects you leave behind. — Harry Hindu

To expand on this: One's legacy (the effect) is a result of one's actions (the causes) in life. As such you create your own meaning by your actions - hence life is not meaningless unless you take no action.

I'm not confusing anything. I'm saying that meaning is the relationship between cause and effect and reference is a type of causal relation.

Not if meaning is subjective and interpretive. How can inherent meaning be subjective? If you are saying that the reason is that some interpretations of meaning are wrong or fall short of what you are labelling 'inherent and found in nature,' are these incorrect meanings not still created in real human minds. These human minds are physical parts of the natural world. A nazi will assign certain interpretive meaning to the label Jewish. Such personal assignment of meaning can be very destructive and very unjust. This happens also in your serial killer example and may be due to a malfunctioning brain.
Were such warped meanings not still CREATED in the real brains/minds of the people who constructed such. — universeness

If meaning were subjective and interpretive then how can we ever hope to communicate using scribbles on a screen? Wouldn't we have to have a common understanding of the meaning of the scribbles for us to communicate?

Take the tree rings in a tree stump. What do the tree rings mean? What does it even mean to ask that question? A botanist would say that the tree rings mean the age of the tree. Was the meaning projected by the botanists mind or something discovered by observation? If it was projected by the botanist's mind then I could project something different and then where would we be? Who would be right or wrong and would it even matter? In other words, if meaning is projected by the mind then I simply need to project from my mind and asking others would be pointless. If it is something that is observed then what would that be if not observing how tree rings (the effect) were created by how the tree grows throughout the year (the cause)? If this is the case then meaning is inherent in the causal relationship between how the tree grows and tree rings appearing in the tree stump. I would simply need to observe the causal relation and agree with the botanist, but there would be no reason for me to agree, or even ask the botanist's opinion, if meaning is projected by each mind.

Its not different really but it is down to their interpretation of the 'effect' you have had of THE world or THEIR world. Which can be very different from your own personal assessment of your effects. — universeness

Right. So we're not disagreeing that your actions have effects on the world (meaning), or that one can have an interpretation of those effects as being conductive to achieving their goals or inhibiting them. So meaning and it's interpretation as good or bad are two different things. Those effects exist prior to any interpretation. Unless you are saying that the interpretation of the effects is meaning which would mean that unless we share the same goals, we don't share the same meanings. If this is the case then when someone asks what the meaning of life is then you have to get at their goals in life to even know if your answer would be useful to them. Goals are simply ideas in the present that trigger effects like behaviors in an effort to realize the goal. Having a purpose, or goal, for something does not necessarily mean that you will achieve that purpose or goal. Even acting in such a way to achieve the goal or purpose doesn't necessarily mean you will achieve it either. Failure to achieve goals and purposes is something that should be considered.

The OP was suggesting that life was meaningless. I think even the simple acrimony that discussion about the meaning of life can cause is itself strong evidence that living a life is anything but meaningless and that legacy is very important to many, if not most people. — universeness

A legacy is essentially the effects you leave behind.

Does this also indicate that you think some meaning is useful to ones life? — universeness

Sure. Meaning and usefulness are mutually exclusive. Meaning is the relationship between causes and effects. Those relations are either useful or not depending on one's own goals. One's goals do not determine if some causal relation is meaningful. They determine which relationships are useful in achieving or inhibiting one's goals.

For instance, your words on this screen carry all sorts of meaning as the effects of numerous causes. Your words are caused by your ideas and your intent to communicate them. They are also caused by the language you learned and you level of understanding of English. By reading your words I can get at your ideas as well as your understanding of the language you are using - depending on my goals. Just because I may be more interested in your understanding of the English language does not mean that you words also do not carry meaning in that they refer to your ideas. Meaning is there in the causal relation between your idea and your words on this screen, but aren't useful to my goal in understanding your level of education with the English language.

Where is your proof of that? Just asking you a question. — Jackson

In the definition I have provided for meaning as the relationship between cause and effect. The definition I have provided stems from my own observations of others asking questions about what something means and what they actually mean in asking what something means is what caused it to happen.

For instance, what do your words on this page mean? They mean your ideas and your intent to communicate them. If you didn't have any ideas or an intent to communicate them (the cause), would your worlds appear on this screen (the effect) for me to observe and read them? In reading your words (the effect) am I not attempting to get at your ideas (the cause)?

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.