8 ms·

> “Meaningness” is a word I invented, referring to the quality of being meaningful and/or meaningless. ... > The various dimensions of meaningness are discuss

by scandox 10y ago

> “Meaningness” is a word I invented, referring to the quality of being meaningful and/or meaningless. ... > The various dimensions of meaningness are discussed in religion and philosophy; but, strangely, the topic as a whole is never addressed. I don't know anything about the author, but this feels like the classic sophomoric illusion of having discovered an entire field of "mysteriously neglected" ideas, combined with the classic sophomoric attempt at an overarching everything-fits-into-this theory of life.

irickt 10y ago
That may be. Here seems to be the heart of the argument: https://meaningness.com/meaningness https://meaningness.com/meaningness >>> Maintaining the confused stances — eternalism, nihilism, and existentialism — is actually impossible, because they are obviously wrong. At some level, we are always aware that they require extensive make-believe. >>> We may begin by asking: What is creative, but not eternalistic? What is realistic, but not nihilistic?
EdwardCoffin 10y ago
The author is a well known A.I. person, who wrote some landmark papers in the field, and played a role in the production of some others. His masters thesis Planning for conjunctive goals [1] is one. He's also written other works such as How to do research at the MIT AI Lab [2] and How to think real good [3] (don't judge this by the title, he chose the name as a deliberate ironic allusion to a badly translated book). [1] ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AITR-802.pdf [2] https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/41487 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/41487 [3] https://meaningness.com/metablog/how-to-think https://meaningness.com/metablog/how-to-think
- scandox 10y ago
  That's interesting. "Soon after, I realized that AI was a dead end, and left the field." His bluntness and pith there are refreshing anyway.
mizzao 10y ago
This seems to happen a lot when accomplished academics from other fields discover philosophy.
- jolux 10y ago
  I was going to say, I discovered a comment on that site when searching to see if it knew it was talking about phenomenology, semantics, semiotics, etc. https://meaningness.com/fixation-and-denial/comments https://meaningness.com/fixation-and-denial/comments On the one hand, this seems to fulfill Kant's definition of genius (independently arriving at concepts that would have to be taught to most people) but on the other hand it reflects a certain naïveté that people in the sciences seem to have about the liberal arts: that meaningful (ha) questions such as these have not been properly considered in philosophy even given the fact that philosophy predates positivist Western science and the enlightenment by a few thousand years and there's like a 90% chance that Plato addressed these questions of "meaningness" somewhere and possibly even that he came to the same conclusions at one point or another. At that point of course it's sort of a psychological question for me: why are highly intelligent people often drawn to the same questions and the same answers multiple times independently over thousands of years? I think the answer lies somewhere in sort of the "death of the author" problem in that language ceases to be useful in discussing certain questions past a certain level of abstraction and thus abstract communication is doomed to be imprecise such that we sound like we're repeating ourselves when we might not actually be. The revolutions in philosophical understanding, then, would seem to happen almost as if by chance: somebody articulates a shared meaning so successfully that its presence is evident to other people where once it was hidden. This is sort of what Wittgenstein was getting at I believe with Tractatus and the proposition that philosophical misunderstandings are shortcomings of language and thus if you can manage to simplify language enough that overloaded, idiosyncratic, and imprecise meanings are eliminated then you can formally deduce all of philosophy from a few first principles. I'm butchering him of course but this attitude is similar among lots of analytics and (as far as I know) originates with Wittgenstein and Russell. A meta-narrative so to speak of the continental approach would seem to be something along the lines of creating and articulating original ideas with universal scope which are not perhaps falsifiable but provoke thought in the subject. (somewhat Deleuzian I think)
youdontknowtho 10y ago
I think you got this one nailed. It feels very...Chopra. I don't know. Maybe the content makes up for it, but I would be very wary of proceeding.
- ashark 10y ago
  I'm already noticing that it offers a tepid indictment of modern philosophy for retreating from the "big questions" and immediately proceeds to do the exact same thing by narrowing its scope to avoid the approaches and definitions that make this particular "big question" practically unaddressable in any satisfying way. Invoking philosophy in this manner feels like slight-of-hand aimed at stroking the readers' egos, which triggered my "danger: beware charlatanism and/or cynical reader-pleasing self-help advice" alarm. (I wrote more on this but deleted it, because I don't want to pile on the author too heavily in case this is offered earnestly, and the effect was accidental)
  - youdontknowtho 10y ago
    I think that's actually a great description. Much better than my vague feeling. Thanks.
Analemma_ 10y ago
I would at least try a couple of the articles before you write Chapman off completely. Anyone is going to sound dumb if you just read their thesis statement, but he backs it up pretty well in the succeeding writings. Try the bits about fundamentalism [0], the two counter-cultures [1], and the history of going from pre-modern to modern thinking and the problems it created [2]. You may not think the has the Ultimate Answer, but he's not a New Age BSer either. [0]: https://meaningness.com/fundamentalism-countercultural-modernism https://meaningness.com/fundamentalism-countercultural-moder... [1]: https://meaningness.com/countercultures-fail https://meaningness.com/countercultures-fail [2]: https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
- jolux 10y ago
  The thing is (and he even references Lyotard at one point) this stuff is all pretty concretely addressed in postmodern phenomenology and semiotics etc. I'm not sure what the unique addition is quite yet, but I suppose even if this is just a reconstitution of postmodernism for techies it would be worth it too :P
  - orasis 10y ago
    I think David might cry if you interpreted his writing as postmodern. He quite explicitly critiques the developmental dead-ends of postmodernism. I can't do his ideas justice, but the path of postmodernism is essentially a form of nihilism that must be broken through to a new level of meaning-making. That is to say, a modern level of development believes there are self-evident truths. postmodern would say that all truths are relative, without basis. An integral or construct-aware level would have insight into meaning-making itself and be able to create "solid" values out of nothing - essentially a post-nihilism. I don't think theres good language for these stages, so I'm just using "construct aware" from Susan Cooke-Greuter: http://newpossibilitiesassociates.com/uploads/9_levels_of_increasing_embrace_update_1_07.pdf http://newpossibilitiesassociates.com/uploads/9_levels_of_in...
    - jolux 10y ago
sago 10y ago
tl;dr, but concluded it is sophomoric rubbish? The author is pretty well known, technically, and has been applying Buddhist-style inquiry patterns to a western vernacular for a long time. I don't think the knee-jerk cynicism is warranted. You may disagree with his conclusions, but he isn't a superficial guy. And the fact that you think a search for meaning outside traditional religious models is 'mysteriously neglected' is baffling. Nothing in your comment seems to correspond to David's work, as far as I can tell.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- trosh 10y ago
  I agree with you that the comment seems very off-hand. However scandox doesn't claim that this search, outside of religion, is neglected; instead he uses sarcastic quotes to claim that it's not, while meaningness.com would pretend it is. I don't want to try and answer whether it's really neglected or not. My personal experience is that I haven't seen an approach as reasonable, methodical and clear as this one (so fa in my reading).
- scandox 10y ago
  Making a slightly better answer here. Your last observation seems to misunderstand what I'm saying. I only mean that it is common for people new to a field (in this case undoubtedly the art-science formerly known as philosophy) to imagine that they have discovered new territory of investigation. In a sense I'm saying the opposite of what you think I am. I'm saying that the whole topic under discussion has been broadly under discussion since the beginning of recorded civilisation. So saying "strangely, the topic as a whole is never addressed" seems a tad like a new minted programmer saying "strangely no-one has addressed the entire topic of OO programming".
  - ashark 10y ago
    I've read/skimmed a ways in. I'd say your judgement of it was sound. There's been a lot of, "wait, you know this is a whole thing, right? [reads a little farther] Huh, guess not." More than you might expect from the introduction, in fact—it keeps stumbling against the edges of those sorts of well-explored topics across a surprisingly broad range.
hosh 10y ago
I don't agree with all of Chapman's work or thesis, but I usually enjoy his writings and blog post immensely :-D
metaphorm 10y ago
it seems like more of a "classic sophomoric illusion" to dismiss an entire work because you didn't like a sentence you read in the first 5 minutes of seeing it.
- scandox 10y ago
  Indeed you have skewered me there. But really I'm not dismissing his work. I'm doing what slushpile readers might call editorial triage. Based on his opening will I read this? No.
  - arstin 10y ago
    If only the process of our life wasn't time-bound! There's so much to read that we can't help but look for signals, especially ones in an introduction which is designed explicitly by the author to get people to continue reading the book and which takes as its subject the book as a whole. It's not a matter of merely "not liking a sentence", it's that the author makes false or misleading claims to bolster his own standing (like the one quoted), fails to display a mastery of the relevant material, and gives enough clues in style and substance about the kind of book this is for me to know, from past experience, that it won't be my personal cup of tea. What really matters: I won't be reading this book given what I've seen so far, but I don't intend this as a general criticism. Writing like this is essentially therapy and different people respond to different treatments. It may well be that for many science-y/CS folk this is just what the doctor ordered! And I have no interest in undermining that! And even if it is, to my sensibility, messy and lacking in the forceful individual style truly soul nourishing books require, it can still be valuable. Lord knows there are many books which I can rationally pick apart every which way or which just mouth one platitude after another, yet which truly moved me and made me a better person and of which I wouldn't change a thing.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      I think you might be very surprised if you read some of the author's other works then. good summary of his work is here: https://vividness.live/ https://vividness.live/ in particular he has written extensively about Buddhism and speaking personally I think he has a fascinating heterodox perspective on the subject.
cgag 10y ago
Classic sophomoric dismissal.
cgag 10y ago
Classic sophomoric dismissal.
cgag 10y ago
Classic sophomoric dismissal.
samirillian 10y ago
Off the top of my head Heidegger pretty directly engages the problem of meaning. That said, when I recently polled a selection of my friends (professionals in their late 20s) on if they found life to be meaningful and why, none could offer a coherent answer. I was very happy to see this effort on hn; and not surprised to see a dismissive comment at the top, like, "meaning, that tired old problem"
- mbrock 10y ago
  Chapman was involved in some of the earlier collision between AI optimism and Heidegger's critique of cognitivism (via Dreyfus).
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  > Off the top of my head Heidegger pretty directly engages the problem of meaning. And Ecclesiastes addresses the problem of meaninglessness.
samirillian 10y ago
Off the top of my head Heidegger pretty directly engages the problem of meaning. That said, when I recently polled a selection of my friends (professionals in their late 20s) on if they found life to be meaningful and why, none could offer a coherent answer. I was very happy to see this effort on hn; and, sadly, not surprised to see a dismissive comment at the top, like, "meaning, that tired old problem"
scythe 10y ago
The validity (or lack thereof) of meaning as a "property" of a linguistic expression ("utterance") is a central focus of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. If "neglected" ideas are the focus of the most popular philosophy book of the last century, they probably aren't all that neglected.
projektir 10y ago
It seems like this argument could be applied to, well, literally anything, and I don't know how it could be defended against. "sophomoric" doesn't actually convey any information besides a raw dislike of even the idea of new discoveries made by new people, yet that's exactly how a lot of things went about. Meanwhile, I feel like this is the kind of thing people are not doing anywhere near often enough. It's very hard for me to find ways of thinking that are new. Many areas definitely seem "mysteriously neglected", although I'm lately having doubts about the "mysterious" part... I think in society there is a very strong push against things that try to be special, to the point that we're going to shut down all the things that actually are special along the way since we can't be bothered to tell the difference.

by scandox 10y ago

irickt 10y ago

That may be. Here seems to be the heart of the argument: https://meaningness.com/meaningness https://meaningness.com/meaningness >>> Maintaining the confused stances — eternalism, nihilism, and existentialism — is actually impossible, because they are obviously wrong. At some level, we are always aware that they require extensive make-believe. >>> We may begin by asking: What is creative, but not eternalistic? What is realistic, but not nihilistic?

EdwardCoffin 10y ago

The author is a well known A.I. person, who wrote some landmark papers in the field, and played a role in the production of some others. His masters thesis Planning for conjunctive goals [1] is one. He's also written other works such as How to do research at the MIT AI Lab [2] and How to think real good [3] (don't judge this by the title, he chose the name as a deliberate ironic allusion to a badly translated book). [1] ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AITR-802.pdf [2] https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/41487 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/41487 [3] https://meaningness.com/metablog/how-to-think https://meaningness.com/metablog/how-to-think

scandox 10y ago
That's interesting. "Soon after, I realized that AI was a dead end, and left the field." His bluntness and pith there are refreshing anyway.

mizzao 10y ago

This seems to happen a lot when accomplished academics from other fields discover philosophy.

jolux 10y ago
I was going to say, I discovered a comment on that site when searching to see if it knew it was talking about phenomenology, semantics, semiotics, etc. https://meaningness.com/fixation-and-denial/comments https://meaningness.com/fixation-and-denial/comments On the one hand, this seems to fulfill Kant's definition of genius (independently arriving at concepts that would have to be taught to most people) but on the other hand it reflects a certain naïveté that people in the sciences seem to have about the liberal arts: that meaningful (ha) questions such as these have not been properly considered in philosophy even given the fact that philosophy predates positivist Western science and the enlightenment by a few thousand years and there's like a 90% chance that Plato addressed these questions of "meaningness" somewhere and possibly even that he came to the same conclusions at one point or another. At that point of course it's sort of a psychological question for me: why are highly intelligent people often drawn to the same questions and the same answers multiple times independently over thousands of years? I think the answer lies somewhere in sort of the "death of the author" problem in that language ceases to be useful in discussing certain questions past a certain level of abstraction and thus abstract communication is doomed to be imprecise such that we sound like we're repeating ourselves when we might not actually be. The revolutions in philosophical understanding, then, would seem to happen almost as if by chance: somebody articulates a shared meaning so successfully that its presence is evident to other people where once it was hidden. This is sort of what Wittgenstein was getting at I believe with Tractatus and the proposition that philosophical misunderstandings are shortcomings of language and thus if you can manage to simplify language enough that overloaded, idiosyncratic, and imprecise meanings are eliminated then you can formally deduce all of philosophy from a few first principles. I'm butchering him of course but this attitude is similar among lots of analytics and (as far as I know) originates with Wittgenstein and Russell. A meta-narrative so to speak of the continental approach would seem to be something along the lines of creating and articulating original ideas with universal scope which are not perhaps falsifiable but provoke thought in the subject. (somewhat Deleuzian I think)

youdontknowtho 10y ago

I think you got this one nailed. It feels very...Chopra. I don't know. Maybe the content makes up for it, but I would be very wary of proceeding.

ashark 10y ago
I'm already noticing that it offers a tepid indictment of modern philosophy for retreating from the "big questions" and immediately proceeds to do the exact same thing by narrowing its scope to avoid the approaches and definitions that make this particular "big question" practically unaddressable in any satisfying way. Invoking philosophy in this manner feels like slight-of-hand aimed at stroking the readers' egos, which triggered my "danger: beware charlatanism and/or cynical reader-pleasing self-help advice" alarm. (I wrote more on this but deleted it, because I don't want to pile on the author too heavily in case this is offered earnestly, and the effect was accidental)
- youdontknowtho 10y ago
  I think that's actually a great description. Much better than my vague feeling. Thanks.

Analemma_ 10y ago

I would at least try a couple of the articles before you write Chapman off completely. Anyone is going to sound dumb if you just read their thesis statement, but he backs it up pretty well in the succeeding writings. Try the bits about fundamentalism [0], the two counter-cultures [1], and the history of going from pre-modern to modern thinking and the problems it created [2]. You may not think the has the Ultimate Answer, but he's not a New Age BSer either. [0]: https://meaningness.com/fundamentalism-countercultural-modernism https://meaningness.com/fundamentalism-countercultural-moder... [1]: https://meaningness.com/countercultures-fail https://meaningness.com/countercultures-fail [2]: https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history

jolux 10y ago
The thing is (and he even references Lyotard at one point) this stuff is all pretty concretely addressed in postmodern phenomenology and semiotics etc. I'm not sure what the unique addition is quite yet, but I suppose even if this is just a reconstitution of postmodernism for techies it would be worth it too :P
- orasis 10y ago
  I think David might cry if you interpreted his writing as postmodern. He quite explicitly critiques the developmental dead-ends of postmodernism. I can't do his ideas justice, but the path of postmodernism is essentially a form of nihilism that must be broken through to a new level of meaning-making. That is to say, a modern level of development believes there are self-evident truths. postmodern would say that all truths are relative, without basis. An integral or construct-aware level would have insight into meaning-making itself and be able to create "solid" values out of nothing - essentially a post-nihilism. I don't think theres good language for these stages, so I'm just using "construct aware" from Susan Cooke-Greuter: http://newpossibilitiesassociates.com/uploads/9_levels_of_increasing_embrace_update_1_07.pdf http://newpossibilitiesassociates.com/uploads/9_levels_of_in...
  - jolux 10y ago

sago 10y ago

tl;dr, but concluded it is sophomoric rubbish? The author is pretty well known, technically, and has been applying Buddhist-style inquiry patterns to a western vernacular for a long time. I don't think the knee-jerk cynicism is warranted. You may disagree with his conclusions, but he isn't a superficial guy. And the fact that you think a search for meaning outside traditional religious models is 'mysteriously neglected' is baffling. Nothing in your comment seems to correspond to David's work, as far as I can tell.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
trosh 10y ago
I agree with you that the comment seems very off-hand. However scandox doesn't claim that this search, outside of religion, is neglected; instead he uses sarcastic quotes to claim that it's not, while meaningness.com would pretend it is. I don't want to try and answer whether it's really neglected or not. My personal experience is that I haven't seen an approach as reasonable, methodical and clear as this one (so fa in my reading).
scandox 10y ago
Making a slightly better answer here. Your last observation seems to misunderstand what I'm saying. I only mean that it is common for people new to a field (in this case undoubtedly the art-science formerly known as philosophy) to imagine that they have discovered new territory of investigation. In a sense I'm saying the opposite of what you think I am. I'm saying that the whole topic under discussion has been broadly under discussion since the beginning of recorded civilisation. So saying "strangely, the topic as a whole is never addressed" seems a tad like a new minted programmer saying "strangely no-one has addressed the entire topic of OO programming".
- ashark 10y ago
  I've read/skimmed a ways in. I'd say your judgement of it was sound. There's been a lot of, "wait, you know this is a whole thing, right? [reads a little farther] Huh, guess not." More than you might expect from the introduction, in fact—it keeps stumbling against the edges of those sorts of well-explored topics across a surprisingly broad range.

hosh 10y ago

I don't agree with all of Chapman's work or thesis, but I usually enjoy his writings and blog post immensely :-D

metaphorm 10y ago

it seems like more of a "classic sophomoric illusion" to dismiss an entire work because you didn't like a sentence you read in the first 5 minutes of seeing it.

scandox 10y ago
Indeed you have skewered me there. But really I'm not dismissing his work. I'm doing what slushpile readers might call editorial triage. Based on his opening will I read this? No.
- arstin 10y ago
  If only the process of our life wasn't time-bound! There's so much to read that we can't help but look for signals, especially ones in an introduction which is designed explicitly by the author to get people to continue reading the book and which takes as its subject the book as a whole. It's not a matter of merely "not liking a sentence", it's that the author makes false or misleading claims to bolster his own standing (like the one quoted), fails to display a mastery of the relevant material, and gives enough clues in style and substance about the kind of book this is for me to know, from past experience, that it won't be my personal cup of tea. What really matters: I won't be reading this book given what I've seen so far, but I don't intend this as a general criticism. Writing like this is essentially therapy and different people respond to different treatments. It may well be that for many science-y/CS folk this is just what the doctor ordered! And I have no interest in undermining that! And even if it is, to my sensibility, messy and lacking in the forceful individual style truly soul nourishing books require, it can still be valuable. Lord knows there are many books which I can rationally pick apart every which way or which just mouth one platitude after another, yet which truly moved me and made me a better person and of which I wouldn't change a thing.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    I think you might be very surprised if you read some of the author's other works then. good summary of his work is here: https://vividness.live/ https://vividness.live/ in particular he has written extensively about Buddhism and speaking personally I think he has a fascinating heterodox perspective on the subject.

cgag 10y ago

Classic sophomoric dismissal.

cgag 10y ago

Classic sophomoric dismissal.

cgag 10y ago

Classic sophomoric dismissal.

samirillian 10y ago

Off the top of my head Heidegger pretty directly engages the problem of meaning. That said, when I recently polled a selection of my friends (professionals in their late 20s) on if they found life to be meaningful and why, none could offer a coherent answer. I was very happy to see this effort on hn; and not surprised to see a dismissive comment at the top, like, "meaning, that tired old problem"

mbrock 10y ago
Chapman was involved in some of the earlier collision between AI optimism and Heidegger's critique of cognitivism (via Dreyfus).
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
> Off the top of my head Heidegger pretty directly engages the problem of meaning. And Ecclesiastes addresses the problem of meaninglessness.

samirillian 10y ago

Off the top of my head Heidegger pretty directly engages the problem of meaning. That said, when I recently polled a selection of my friends (professionals in their late 20s) on if they found life to be meaningful and why, none could offer a coherent answer. I was very happy to see this effort on hn; and, sadly, not surprised to see a dismissive comment at the top, like, "meaning, that tired old problem"

scythe 10y ago

The validity (or lack thereof) of meaning as a "property" of a linguistic expression ("utterance") is a central focus of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. If "neglected" ideas are the focus of the most popular philosophy book of the last century, they probably aren't all that neglected.

projektir 10y ago

It seems like this argument could be applied to, well, literally anything, and I don't know how it could be defended against. "sophomoric" doesn't actually convey any information besides a raw dislike of even the idea of new discoveries made by new people, yet that's exactly how a lot of things went about. Meanwhile, I feel like this is the kind of thing people are not doing anywhere near often enough. It's very hard for me to find ways of thinking that are new. Many areas definitely seem "mysteriously neglected", although I'm lately having doubts about the "mysterious" part... I think in society there is a very strong push against things that try to be special, to the point that we're going to shut down all the things that actually are special along the way since we can't be bothered to tell the difference.