Do you mean this?: The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death. — MoK

That's a description of what life is not the meaning of life.

And I am asking you for the third time if you could please provide a definition of the meaning of life or what the meaning of life refers to. This is your thread, and providing the definition of things that you use when people ask for them is necessary for any constructive discussion. — MoK

The meaning of life is literally what it says, you have the definition already. What that meaning is depends on who you ask.

I don't know. This is your thread, not mine. It is up to you to explain what meaning refers to in a couple of sentences, a paragraph, etc. Saying that there are books on this topic does not resolve the problem. — MoK

I'm saying people know what the meaning of life means.

Quoting Freud is ironically more a disproof of your claim than anything else. He didn't recognize two different types, he guessed. Thankfully no one really buys that anymore. — Darkneos

It is, much of what Freud thought turned out to be wrong.

Freud recognized two different types of processes, the preconscious, which contains thoughts that can easily become conscious, and the unconscious proper, which holds repressed material that cannot be directly accessed.

Quoting Freud is ironically more a disproof of your claim than anything else. He didn't recognize two different types, he guessed. Thankfully no one really buys that anymore.

What kind of answer to "what is reality?" are you looking for — 180 Proof

The two you posted.

Well, that's mostly my position too, for the most part, but more as someone who also has sympathies for pragmatism. But I remain curious and open to most arguments. — Tom Storm

I used to care about the answer too much until I realized I had no idea what I'd do when I got there. I forgot how to "live" life and was more obsessed with answers than the process.

That last one I found funny, as if there is a burden of proof for suggesting there is NOTHING supernatural. For me I might fall into methodological naturalism if only I have yet to meet a better tool than science for discovering things about the world. I know it's not perfect but so far people who claim to hate it don't got anything nearly as reliable or successful as it.

That first post though I couldn't really make much heads or tails out of, except for the parts about "intuition" and trying to eliminate misconception and what is "not real". The first part isn't really possible because intuition is sorta how philosophy starts. The other two are more like chasing your tail in practice.

Same with the idea of "illusions of knowledge", it's more accurate to say knowledge evolves not really that there are illusions of it. Also not aligning our expectations with reality is how humans advanced this far, so it doesn't really cause suffering per se. Planes likely wouldn't' exist if humans did that, among other things.

What is reality? — 180 Proof

Oh I almost forgot, neither of those links answered the question or had anything to really add to it.

No, I’m saying that a particular view is simply on the menu. If you can’t tell the difference between a statement that contextualizes an idea within philosophical discourse and an ad populum argument, then we’ve got bigger problems than the nature of reality.. — Tom Storm

Seem more like you're playing loose with popularity when it suites you, that's the problem.

It’s very much part of the current thinking of writers like Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch, and Shaun Gallagher. What evidence do you have that it has fallen out of favour? I don’t think it was ever “in favour” as such, just part of the philosophical menu. The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson has been a significant topic of discussion on this site for a few years. — Tom Storm

I don't think science ignores human experience per se, but rather new discoveries tend to pull more and more of that ground from philosophy.

I mean I've heard of that book but looking through it read more like misunderstandings than any real argument for human experience. I mean just looking into neuroscience you can find how much of our experience of reality is illusory in a sense, vision comes to mind. What you see is more your brain predicting what might happen based on past data while correcting for errors if it's wrong. You don't notice this though.

As for consciousness, strong evidence points to a neuroscientific basis. Doesn't matter if you guys talk about it often on this site, doesn't make it accurate.

The blind spots are closing.

Indeed and I am unsure what reality is meant to be and whether it can be known. Which is not the same thing as saying it cannot be known.

What is reality? — Tom Storm

I would say reality is "this" (gestures around myself), so far haven't really encountered a better view.

Though the question of what is reality is much less important than how to live IMO. Even if I had a solid answer the bigger problem would be what to do with it or my life after the fact.

Kinda reminds me why Buddha never answered questions on what is "reality" and such because it didn't really matter. I kinda like his stance.

I said it's an orthodox philosophical view that reality can't be fully known. I'm not saying this to imply it's popular, but rather to point out that it's an established position for us to contend with. It's on the philosophical "menu" and not, as you seem to think, something that is automatically ridiculous just because science seems to work.

Anyway, we seem to be talking past each other. Take care. — Tom Storm

When you say something is a standard view you're implying a degree of popularity, even the context of your post showed as such.

That's not really what I'm saying at all. There is a difference between "we don't directly engage with reality" and "reality cannot be known". Again science it a strong argument that we don't have to directly engage with it to know it (which would explain why it's findings frequently go against our intuitions).

Then you bring up Postmodernism when it's criticisms of science (which I understand but....) don't really hold. They can call it language games and models and things like that but time and again the results speak for themselves. It never claims to have perfect knowledge of the world and acknowledges it could all be wrong, but we currently don't have a better method for understanding reality, and this one is working really well. Shockingly IMO.

Really just seems like you give up when called out.

It may be that I don't understand what you mean by "external world." If you mean by it the world we're part of, I don't know why you call it "external." External to what?

I certainly don't think we can't know the people and things we interact with every moment of our lives. What reason is there to think I don't?
Judging from our own conduct and how we live our lives, none of us actually doubt their existence or believe we don't know them. Claiming we nonetheless can doubt their existence or can't really know them is insist on a difference which clearly makes no difference. — Ciceronianus

External to one's perception, or in the case "mind independent". In other words the opposite of solipsism. An external world means a world that exists outside your head (not a dream for example or some hallucination). It doesn't depend on you to exist. Solipsism argues (unfortunately rather effectively) that we cannot be sure there exists such a world and it could just be a figment of our imagination.

Yeah none of us doubt it but we can't really demonstrate it to be true, it's just an assumption we make.

Yeah, just like physicists "can't agree on" the ontology of quantum physics, and yet ... :mask: — 180 Proof

That's a bit more complicated.

It's interesting how you consistently interpret this wrongly. To say that the external world cannot be known is by no means the same as saying there is no external world. And I am not committed to either. I am stating that I have sympathy for a constructivist view, which resonates with other philosophical schools. — Tom Storm

It might as well be saying there isn't one if it cannot be known. But again it's not really true that it cannot be known. Kant might have thought that but that doesn't make it so.

That's an ad populum fallacy. Philosophy is not a popularity contest. — Tom Storm

It's not ad populum fallacy, also you're the one who claimed it first by saying it's a standard view yet when I say it's not suddenly it's a fallacy. Though I would argue philosophy is a popularity constest.

I am also saying that I have sympathy for the view that reality is a human construct an act of embodied cognition and that we don't experience it directly. — Tom Storm

I don't, sounds like a looney thing to think, especially since embodied cognition has fallen out of favor due to it's flaws (and evidence against it).

You're dead in the water until you learn to read others with more care. — Tom Storm

That might be more you than me, I've got their words yet you want to insist it's something else.

There are many arguments against this notion. Let's just take one of them: the very success of science itself depends on models, abstractions, and instruments that mediate our experience. What we have are theoretical constructs and measurements, not unfiltered access to reality. — Tom Storm

Not a very strong argument given the results pretty much speak for themselves. Either we are accurately contacting and modeling some sort of external reality (more or less "accurately") or we've just gotten lucky that everything works out. Occam's Razor would seem to favor the former.

Of course, you might ask, who cares what the postmodernists say? And anyone can use that approach to dismiss any school of thought that doesn’t please us. — Tom Storm

TBH yeah, who cares what they think? There hasn't been anything really useful out of that school but just undermining things (or trying to).

Postmodernists would go further and argue that 'success' is a socially constructed standard: science’s predictive power doesn’t show us reality as it is, but only that our current frameworks work within the language games and practices we’ve built. In other words, science is one way of making sense of the world, not a privileged window into some mind-independent truth. — Tom Storm

Doesn't really alter the results though, science so far has been our best method for understanding and shaping reality so that criticism kinda falls flat. They can dress their complaints all they want but they don't have anything better or more consistent so........

Ordinarily I'd give that more credence but given the success of science at what it does it's about as close to mind-independent truth as we're gonna get. There isn't much reason to think it doesn't show reality as it is (despite what postmodernists argue, and their protests aren't worth a hill of beans). I'd go further that it's not a language games thing anymore.

Maybe their just bitter because they don't have a better method, that's what it sounds like. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I can't argue with the results. Maybe they should just quit while they're behind, those arguments might have held water back when it was just Natural Philosophy, but not now.

Postmodernism is better when directed at the arts, politics, things like that, but when it comes to science it just ends up looking weak. Again the results speak for themselves, we're kinda past "language games".

Yes, we created the concept, but we don't know what it refers to! — MoK

Yeah we do, again hundreds of books have been written on it.

See the comment, perhaps, more in the tradition of phenomenology or a more constructivist orientation, for which I have sympathy. It does not match your interpretation that there is "nothing and it's all in the mind". — Tom Storm

But that is what is meant especially since it started with "The external world that cannot be know" by their own words. Your assessment is still incorrect.

I do not think it is clear that humans make direct contact with a world external or transcendent to our interactions and cognition, which is a perfectly standard philosophical position, whether you are talking about Kant, Heidegger, or the more prosaic Hilary Lawson. To quote the lesser known philosopher, Norman Bates, "We're all in our private traps." — Tom Storm

It's actually a minority position among philosophers. Most generally regard there to be a world outside themselves, Kant merely said that we don't directly perceive it. Heidegger was kinda nutty on that end. The private traps kinda loses it's teeth when you realize he said that to other people which like means he thinks there is a world outside him (also the character is fictional).

But given the success of science it could be reasonable to say we do directly make contact with it. Albeit indirectly and it's approximations they're too consistent to default to instrumentalism anymore.

More or less it's a position you have to accept to get anywhere in philosophy otherwise you're dead in the water. Without external reality philosophy is rendered moot.

I don't understand. If someone finds they've been trapped in a fly bottle of their own making, they're free of it. Their metaphorical eyes have been opened (the fly bottle is of course only a metaphor as well). They're to be congratulated, not denigrated. — Ciceronianus

But according to you there is no out as in the external world isn't known.

Finding the way out of the fly bottle means there is no "external" world-- there is no world separate from us, in other words. We're not observers of the rest of the world; we participate in it interact with its other constituents every moment of our lives.

So, being free of the fly bottle doesn't mean one accepts the existence of world "external" to us. One accepts, instead, that there's a world and that we're a part of it. — Ciceronianus

But there is an external world, otherwise there is no way you could be part of it. It would not exist only in your head or a dream. We are BOTH observers and participants of it, well that's the assumption anyway. Like you said, the external world cannot be known for certain so it could just be in your head.

Being free of the fly bottle, ironically is just flying into another one, as one cannot know if there is a "World out there" and it's not just a figment of the mind. Ergo, nothing to participate in.

I don't think that's the right reading of his post. See ↪Ciceronianus last post. — Tom Storm

It is, especially since it doesn't seem like they understand what they are saying with "External world" in air quotes. Suggesting it cannot be known means there is nothing to be a part of since it's all in your mind.

External world and reality means there is a world to be a part of that does not depend on you for its existence. I feel that much should be obvious to gather from what I'm saying.

Only if you're still buzzing around in the fly bottle. Once out, you may dare to think about, e g., your interaction with the rest of the world as an organism in an environment of which you're a part, and with others. But for those who like being in the bottle they've built, they may continue to indulge themselves. — Ciceronianus

But again that would require there to be an external world, one which you doubt is true. You see how that doesn't really add up?

There is nothing to say that you being "out" would lead to thinking of you as an organism interacting with the rest of the world. Again philosophy often contradictions that notion as that would still be being in the bottle. Getting out of the bottle, ironically means accepting there might not be a world or others with which you are a part of.

But is it truly unfair to suggest that perhaps just because someone finds what one values in life to be false they're suddenly "a fly trapped in a bottle?" Surely that's dehumanization, an ego run amuck that only finds value in one's life choices and mindset by comparing anything different to something insignificant. Isn't that sad? A cry for help?. Love corrects. Hate condemns. Real talk. :100: — Outlander

Not really, comparison is what we do.

And, to MoK's credit, it's not like any animals are going around fat shaming or judging one another by their economic value or political views. Or are they? — Outlander

They do, well not for that but shame is a thing in social animals.

I like this — Tom Storm

It's self refuting if you think about it. Like if there is no "External world" that kinda renders philosophy moot.

Sure we can. You’re right that you don’t have access to everything. But then again, the kinds of subjects that philosophy covers tend to be associated with conscious attention and intention. It’s also true that the more aware you become, the more of your unconscious mental activity becomes conscious. — T Clark

Nope, not how it works. The fact that it's unconscious means you cannot be aware of it, no matter how much more aware you become. It's out of the scope. Vision is one example of this, you brain predicts what might happen based on past data and corrects for errors, but you cannot tell. To you it seems seamless, that's something no amount of awareness will change.

Philosophy's "purpose" is flourishing –
to understand and practice aligning expectations (i.e. judgments) with reality. — 180 Proof

Funny how it manages to do the opposite of that, especially when philosophers can't agree on reality.

As opposed to the assumption that we don't know what being out of the cave looks like... — Banno

That's kinda the point. We imagine the cave and what we think being out of it looks like, but the reality is we can never know. Pretty sure solipsism pointed that one out.

My preferred interpretation of W's statement is that the fly bottle is something the fly has contrived and by which it mistakenly thinks of itself as apart from the rest of the world instead of a part of the world. So, showing it the way out would include correcting misconceptions, e.g. the belief in an "external world" which can't truly be known, mind/body and other dualisms. The fly bottle is self-imposed. — Ciceronianus

That doesn't really track. You mention belief in an external world that can't be known and yet showing it the way out as if there is an "out" of it and mind/body dualism was pretty much disproven with modern neuroscience. But the external world can be known, more or less, and if not it's a safe assumption to make (also how would it be a misconception?). That's not really leading out of the bottle though so much as keeping them in one. But also if you are arguing the "external world cannot be known" then there is no "world" for it to be part of. In that sense the bottle is inescapable.

Hence why your statement doesn't really follow.

Also the bottle being a part of the world doesn't make it any less trapping. You aren't really correcting misconceptions so much as putting others in it's place.

The fly bottle isn't self imposed either, it's representative of the cave a la Plato, and suffers from the same problems. That being we assume we know what being out of it looks like. But as I said you're just going from one bottle into another.

I think his quote is made in the sense that he is largely ignorant of how philosophy is.

Nope, just nothing.

I really don't think I can add further, except commenting on your post. You mentioned that plenty of animals think. Could you please give me an example of an animal with the capacity to think? You also mentioned that the meaning of life is both a thought and a feeling, which, of course, does not mean anything at all. — MoK

It does mean something, it means the meaning of life is our invention, we created the concept.

Also as for animals that can think, crows for one. Pigs. Most primates, there are many others. Sounds like you don't see how not special humans are in that department.

Also, elephants mourn their dead. You're making this quite easy. Surely you could do a bit of research? — Outlander

It just sounds like they think humans are the exception when recent research into animals has shown that we are not special in much of what we do.

There are many alternative possibilities as well. Perhaps we were made by a being that no longer exists. Perhaps we succeeded in our purpose, whatever it may have been, and now get to live unhindered by our past duties. It gets a bit hard to keep track of when you step over the logical edge like that and like most religions require, of course so generally isn't very productive in traditional philosophy.

Would you agree that if it were an absolute fact humanity simply evolved organically over millions of years, and the modern human is the most advanced and intelligent being in this and any universe, human life has in fact no real purpose? That is to say, no other purpose than that of a mosquito or a common cold germ? (That "purpose" being simply to propagate DNA) — Outlander

It's not really a matter of that, there seems to be no purpose to life and as such we are able to make one. It looks to be that simple.

You're not really stepping over any logical edges with those "possibilities" (to be generous) since they end the same way, where we are now. That being there seems no purpose so we make one. Everything else you've said is mostly noise.

Being mortal doesn't really make one less capable of understanding life as being immortal, and whether we are able to or not remains to be seen. Maybe there is nothing to get after all, who really knows? Maybe it is just what one makes of it? Doesn't really seem to matter much which people go with.

It is correct. You cannot explain the meaning of life using thought and feeling. Otherwise, you need to explain it using thoughts and feelings to me. As I said, if there is such a thing as the meaning of life, then we are not able to experience it since we are not cognitively evolved well, similar to animals that didn't evolve in order to have thoughts, but feelings only. — MoK

It's not though, the meaning of life is both a thought and a feeling, that doesn't mean I can explain it as such. Plenty of books have also been written about the meaning of life so again you're just wrong.

Also it's not true the animals didn't evolve to have thoughts, plenty do. There is also nothing to suggest that the meaning of life is something we cannot experience because we are not cognitively evolved well.

The meaning of life is a human invention, nothing more. Hence why I said it's thoughts and feelings.

If so, then what else matters most? — 180 Proof

Nothing.

I have come to see that philosophy is a practice like meditation, exercise, learning musical instruments, tai chi, martial arts, and similar enterprises. As with all such practices, the goal is self-awareness. Philosophy is a practice that focuses on becoming more aware of our internal mental processes. This is certainly how it is for me. — T Clark

Well we can't really be aware of our internal mental processes since much of it happens unconsciously.

I like what Wittgenstein said about the purpose of philosophy: "To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle." — Ciceronianus

The irony though is that philosophy also shows there is no way out of the bottle. Rather philosophy is more getting into someone else's bottle (which is sorta what he's doing with the remark, albeit unknowingly).

then is the purpose of philosophy showing the way out, or shaking the bottle? — Banno

Not really, it shows that you can never really know if you're out of it. Plato's cave is fine and all but the assumption in there is that we know what being out of the cave looks like. The painful reality is that like 50 different thinkers all believe they know what's outside the cave.

For me, reducing philosophy to the "why" is a simplification. But there is something interesting implicit in what you have said. To say why the "why" is important is to say that in order to do justice to philosophy in terms of its goal and purpose, you must do more philosophy. For example, my idea of what philosophy is (the discovery of problems) is linked to the ontology I adhere to (the virtual, the problematic and the actual). This is why different philosophers, according to their own philosophy, have different ideas about what philosophy is and what it is for. There is no single answer to what philosophy is; it depends on the philosophy from which you position yourself. In other words, meta-philosophy is philosophical in itself. — JuanZu

Well you could just become a Pyrrhonist and say "nuts to all that".

I would think not crazy but prone to generalization and using arguments by jumping to conclusions, unsupported claims like like everyone is a philosopher and historical accounts that have been proven inconclusive or just outright inaccurate. — L'éléphant

Yeah, I was never really good at telling when people online are bullshitting or not. That or I'm so easily impressed I just accept it because they have pictures and big words so they must know

That's generally the main issue I hear people talk about with philosophy, it doesn't really enhance our lives.

For me, philosophy consists of discovering problems. A problem is discovered in the unthought-of relationships between objects, situations, beliefs, systems of thought, etc., about which concepts are invented. This can be done in a profound or superficial way. But the more profound the philosophy, the more problematic it is. Philosophers train themselves by reading other authors in order to discover problems that require an updating of the virtual. The problem of justice encompasses subjects, social relations, legislation, ethics, and morals, all of which establish virtual relationships with each other that the philosopher must shape and update into new concepts that make you think differently through new concepts. — JuanZu

Well profound might be more open to interpretation than anything else. Plenty of things are problematic without being profound.

I wouldn't say it's discovering problems, more like wondering why. Then again that also raises the question of "why" does the why matter.

The meaning of life, if it exists, is not thoughts or feelings. It must be something that we are not able to experience, perhaps because we are not cognitively well-developed. Life does not have any purpose per se. Any intelligent creature, however, is able to define a purpose for his/her/its life. — MoK

I don't think that's true, that it's not thoughts or feelings since those things are where we get the notion of a meaning for life. There isn't anything saying it's something we are not able to experience.

We're passengers and crew on a great, ancient ship tossed about in an endless storm. What matters most, it seems to me, is deciding how we choose to spend whatever time we have. :death: — 180 Proof

That is not what matters most.

Well, can't be helped. There's an old cartoon, some guy typing away on his monitor, saying 'can't come to bed yet, dear, someone on the Internet is wrong about something.' As an old forum habitué that was a little too close to home ;-) — Wayfarer

It's not really that so much as wondering if there is a point that is valid or I'm just being incredibly gullible again. I don't have a good filter for what's right and wrong on the internet.

Fair enough. But I did notice that the thread was 6 years old. He might well have moved on. — Wayfarer

You say that but he cared enough to leave an (IMO "pissy" comment) when I questioned his notion of purpose in another thread I made so who knows TBH.

I cited the link because it's posted in the intro post he made, the one you upvoted. However that post seems to negate the one he made about what philosophy's purpose is.

I don't know, I guess it depends on interpretation. I think everyone is a philosopher in some sense insofar as they have accepted or rejected some set of values or other. — Janus

Yeah but if the bar is that low you could make the case for any sort of ticket machine being a philosopher since it "Accepts or rejects some set of values or other".

The point is more to examine the things that you hold and why you hold those to be true, that's generally the core of philosophy in my experience.

Completely different thread. But really, if you’re going to debate Quora threads why not do it on Quora? Do you expect the contributors here to weave between here and there just because there’s some question you want answered? — Wayfarer

Well judging by the last thread I made about it the dude doesn't really respond to any critiques of what he says so I want a second opinion from people a bit more versed in philosophy than me.

And it shows how the world we live in has changed. Up until recently, most notable philosophers wrote outside of academic environments and lived off of other jobs or inheritances. These include — Joshs

Right but the point in the link was that everyone is one which is what I disagree with. Most people I argue don't really think much about why things are the way they are.

Some philosophies argue such questions don't matter, which is ironic.

I'm going to assume that's sarcasm because in the same post he links to how all that is pointless:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-profound-thought-that-you-have-had/answer/David-Moore-408?comment_id=487011320&comment_type=2

The use of the word "maturing" here is suspect. It is because according to historical accounts, maturity of the mind, similar to the conception of "modernity", does not differ among people thousands of years ago.

In fact, dating as far back as 200,000 years ago, one discovery that researchers have found is that, compassion and helpfulness have been around since the cave man era. There were evidence that members of a tribe had carried their wounded members to safety, not left them to die out in the field. — L'éléphant

Well part of me thinks he comes of as a crazy sage who's seen some truth because he uses words like semantics and syntax and cites Wittgenstein a lot, but when I look at other stuff of his it doesn't seem like that. like his stuff seems deep only if you don't know better

That's sorta what I meant when I told him in the "big picture" there is no purpose and he got majorly defensive, saying that:

What 'big picture'? If what 'you' are saying is correct then not only is every one of the 'words' in your comment merely a jumble of purposeless pixels but there's no 'comment' either - only a clump of coincidences that fell together like the mass of salty proteinaceous mush that just so happened to conduct enough current to 'think' it was 'clever' to be entirely contradictory in producing such a mess of meaninglessness.

Not only do you not understand what I've written - but by your own 'logic' you don't understand anything.

This is why I am sick of the internet. It continues to suggest to me that people aren't worth my time.

Oh, and of course - your fake profile is blank. I should have known.

To which I would reply, yes. Outside my head these words are not words, there is no comment, nothing like that.

It reminds me something of what Buddhism argues with not only the two truths doctrine but also:

Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.”

And to me it just reads like someone who cannot step out of the human perspective and recognize that all this is mostly for our benefit. Purpose is how we understand the world and reality, without us there is no purpose.

It's sorta like relative and ultimate reality in Buddhism

More than likely though I'm talking to someone who doesn't really understand the concepts he talks about as evidenced here: https://qr.ae/pCGCmB

There's a gap in his argument regarding 'man's search for meaning is the man's purpose'. I am also not satisfied with that. — L'éléphant

Yeah to me that just didn't track and his reply to me just sorta felt like a strawman.

I'm also not really sold on how he thinks we make meaning:

It merely refers to the fact that I, you, and all of us, are continually maturing. We evolve, and in that adaptive development over time we apportion significance to our experience in a manner that manifests as mood, motivation and morality.

Even his concluding remark isn't convincing that making meaning is our purpose:

If we think about it, regardless of what you believe about how man came to be, logotherapy (like all human endeavours) must be evolutionary. It develops in a progressively responsive manner, and even if we imagine that everything is a result of coincidental evolution, acting via complexity for complexity’s sake, then nevertheless we are left with man’s search for meaning occurring within that - which is as much a testament to the undeniable purpose of people as could ever be possible.

This was the link: https://www.amazon.com.au/Evolution-Everything-How-Ideas-Emerge/dp/0062296019

That said all that doesn't sound like purpose, it's just what we do. Heck existentialism was about how to deal with meaning in a meaningless universe. Camus had the best take on it and likely would have denied his arguments.

In fact I'd go further to say that we aren't searching for meaning so much as looking for a way to make it work.

I think you overstate the case ... though I agree with the gist of your comments but for a different reason:

Even if there is an ultimate "purpose", we cannot know it because we do not have an ultimate perspective – a god's eye view from nowhere – from which to perceive / conceive of the whole of reality; we are partial (i.e. ephemeral, proximal) beings for whom 'ultimates' (e.g. purpose with a capital "P") are merely illusions (i.e. "projections" ~Feuerbach, or "hollow idols" ~Niezsche, or "nostalgias" ~Camus ...) — 180 Proof

I have a hard time articulating my thoughts and everything just comes out at once, even though I know the point I'm trying to make.

My main point was that just because we do something doesn't necessarily make it a purpose and that even the language I use is just purposeless lines and pixels without me or someone else there to give them meaning.

In the exchange with him I feel like the word purpose was doing some heavy lifting and from his response he seemed defensive at the notion of things happening by accident, which if you know evolution they kinda do.

I just feel like he misunderstands the terms he uses

Agree with 180 proof.

We do not *know* there is no objective meaning to life, there's just no good evidence for such a thing at this time.

The OP is right though that that doesn't entail everything being meaningless let alone impacting epistemology. You can decide on your own meaning. And you can value this life for what it is. — Mijin

Well that was what I found odd about his reply to me, purpose not existing in the objective sense doesn't mean that we don't know anything or such. Though you could argue whether we know reality itself if all we have is our senses and models of it but I don't think that's what he's going for.

No, purpose is a property that is conferred by something external, it implies design. It's the reason the watchmaker analogy fails as an argument for god.

The fact that we make meaning doesn't mean it's our purpose, it's just what we do. It would be like arguing the purpose of gravity. Purpose can be something that we do but just because we do something does not make it our purpose.

Purpose exists in our heads and we project it onto the world because that's how we understand things, cause and effect. He seems to argue that because that is what we do that makes it our purpose yet that is easily proven false through the various philosophies that argue otherwise (Buddhism being one that comes to mind).

Meaning making is what we do, but just because we do it does not make it our purpose. Eating is what we do but our purpose is not to eat, rather you can argue eating serves a purpose (even that is debatable).

The problem is that we are taking something WE use to understand reality and try to apply it to everything when it doesn't work. He even gets evolution wrong by implying it's some sort of ladder.

He seems very opposed to things being an "accident".

I guess from the link he was trying to infer to some greater level of it and I disagreed with that notion. Like there is no objective purpose because purpose is something we create and how WE as humans understand the world, but that doesn't mean that it is reality.

Like I know we create it but if you read the link he seems to think we search for it.

But again I'm looking more for if my assessment was correct in my arguing against him (per the link)/

There’s no meaning but I think we’re here to enjoy life and learn from the experiences we go through. The question is why though … why do we accumulate countless experiences if we can’t take it with us when we die ?

From a theistic point of view though we’re a product of gods creative energy and there must be a reason why we’re here.

I think life is a big test and we’re here to test ourselves. — kindred

It can be whatever you want to be because there is no purpose to it. But I'm mostly referring to the argument I made in the link.