7 ms·

Just Live

45 points by benbreen 2y ago

cess11 2y ago
What does this mean for small children, that lack the language and ability to understand abstract notions such as structure required for narratives? What does this mean for mystics, who claim that the most important points in life are beyond narration? How about psychedelic experiences, which in a similar way escape from the constraints of storytelling? In a society where the absolute majority of storytelling happens in advertising, doesn't it carry risks to hinge your personality and belief on this practice? Edit: Ah. "Galen John Strawson (born 1952) is a British analytic philosopher".
- yetihehe 2y ago
  > What does this mean for small children, that lack the language and ability to understand abstract notions such as structure required for narratives? It means nothing to them. I think they don't care about such trivialities as a meaning of life, they just live it and are happy splashing in a puddle of water (I still remember how happy I was in one pretty big puddle, there was a lot of splashing!). > What does this mean for mystics, who claim that the most important points in life are beyond narration? How about psychedelic experiences, which in a similar way escape from the constraints of storytelling? That's about searching of other narratives when your chosen one isn't working for you. > In a society where the absolute majority of storytelling happens in advertising, doesn't it carry risks to hinge your personality and belief on this practice? Yeah. When you chose a specific meaning of life, you risk it being not aligned with your inner expectations, even worse when you chose a meaning pushed down from people who don't care for your wellbeing. Like with any metaphor of life (life is a game | life is a series of transactions | life is a story | life is life [nah nah, nah, nah nah] ). From article: > More bluntly: it’s certainly not true that all of us are naturally Narrative; not as I understand the notion. Some people are naturally non-Narrative. Some, like myself, are profoundly anti-Narrative. We conform to the eight platitudes, but we don’t in any way conceive of our lives as having the form of a story.
  - cess11 2y ago
    I think they'll be surprised and frightened when treated as if their lives lack meaning. What do you mean, "working for you"? Do you consider a meaningful life instrumental in relation to something else, which we have to conclude is meaningless or it would be the meaning of that life? I get the impression that you manifest the risk I was alluding to in my initial comment. There's a huge distance between the person Augustine described in his confessions, notably book 2, about the pear tree, and the kind of 'choosy' personality you describe here. Are you really, really sure about which kind is preferable to you?
    - yetihehe 2y ago
      > What do you mean, "working for you"? Do you consider a meaningful life instrumental in relation to something else, which we have to conclude is meaningless or it would be the meaning of that life? I mean "are you happy with how your life is unfolding". Some people need meaning, some don't. It's up to them. I don't care if other people don't have the same needs as me. I only care that they reflect upon what they need in life and try to either fulfill that needs or try to abandon them if they can't. Having unrealized needs is making us humans unhappy. We can either realize them or try to remove them from our "I need this" list. > There's a huge distance between the person Augustine described in his confessions, notably book 2, about the pear tree, and the kind of 'choosy' personality you describe here. Are you really, really sure about which kind is preferable to you? Sorry, didn't read Augustine, Marcus Aurelius Meditations was my book of choice (when I finally read it, most of what he wrote was pretty evident for me, so I describe myself as self-inflicted stoic, but not a TRUE stoic).
      - cess11 2y ago
        So you're applying different ethics for yourself and others? Because one of the main themes in Meditations is that it's fine to be unhappy as long as you are a good person, living a virtous life. Augustine is kind of _the_ critic of stoicism within virtue ethics in european antiquity. Maybe you're missing out. Have you at least engaged with Aristotle?
apantel 2y ago
> Some rephrase the question: ‘What’s the point or purpose of life?’ I don’t find this helps. It seems like asking ‘What’s the point or purpose of the universe?’ and I think the answer to this question is plain. ‘It has none.’ It has countless possible meanings - whatever we make of it; because meanings are made in the mind. Saying it has no meaning is as silly and non-helpful as saying it has one particular meaning.
- poikroequ 2y ago
  I agree with you. I like to flip the question and ask the opposite, what would make life meaningless? When you ponder that question, you come to realize it's a very personal and subjective thing. For some people, religion weighs very heavily and would find life meaningless if there is no God. Others may find life meaningless if there were no others, without friends, family, loved ones, all alone. For me personally, life would be meaningless without happiness or joy, positive experiences, if life were nothing but suffering, what would be the point of living? The meaning of life is very much whatever we make of it.
  - nathan_compton 2y ago
    I think this is just as useful as nihilism except nihilism has the advantage of being more honest and simpler. People seek meaning in life almost precisely to reduce their freedom to act or not act or to think or not think. Meaning is a constraint on possible action and the desire for meaning is a desire to have that constraint imposed on us by external standards of behavior and thought, by god, by reason, whatever. You can't choose this kind of meaning because you can always choose it differently from one moment to the next. Neither is such a definition of meaning useful for intermediating between human beings in conflict. I don't see the point of answering the question this way.
- slothtrop 2y ago
  They're saying meaning is not endemic to any such thing. Colloquially when invoking "meaning" the idea that we are the arbiters of it, while true, seems less popular than one where it's absolute, whether discoverable or otherwise. That's not surprising because it's downstream from religion, where we don't get to decide what's meaningful: we are told. It's neither here nor there because what it's really about is a feeling, not a rationalization.
smitty1e 2y ago
> What is the meaning of life? The question always makes my mind go blank. At some point I questioned the word "mind" here as the ultimate scope of the question. Whatever meaning one will find could prove (babble follows) "orthogonal to the existential plane". The mind is great as far as it goes.
largbae 2y ago
You can feel it when you're doing what gives your life meaning. For me, I am at my best when using my skills and resources to serve my family and friends. It could be as simple as hosting a get-together or helping someone move.
- tmnvix 2y ago
  For me, the meaning of life becomes 'doing the things that are necessary for life'. This is a helpful reminder that I get most satisfaction from those things - cooking, gardening, physical activity, socialising with and helping/nurturing others, etc. In the modern world, most of us 'make a living' by doing quite abstract tasks and fall into the trap of using that income to replace what we think of as mundane tasks with more convenient alternatives (fast food, movies instead of conversation, etc). In a sense, we alienate ourselves from what our lives actually are.
vitiral 2y ago
Words have meaning. Meaning is that which points to something besides itself. Zen is a finger pointing at the moon, do not mistake the finger for the moon. What is the "meaning" of a mountain? What a silly question. The only reason the "meaning of life" seems coherent is because we wrap our very sense of existence in words. Let go of words and definitions and just be. At rest in all that is.
- nico 2y ago
  Language is a very useful tool. However, it’s also just a model/description of what we experience through our perception It’s hard to let go of language But it’s an amazing experience when we can stop it from mediating or even interrupting, our perception of the present moment Just being, just here, just now Thank you for the reminder
  - vitiral 2y ago
    Tools are good servants but bad masters. When you place too much value on the tool you no longer own it, it owns you. Be of one mind with the tool. Use it to complete your purpose. Then, the work complete, put the tool down and walk away. The only path to serenity.
  - scubbo 2y ago
    It's been far too long since I've made a regular practice of meditation - thank _you_ for the reminder.
sph 2y ago
> What is the meaning of life? The question always makes my mind go blank. Then a negative answer comes. It has none. Having no answer is not negative. You deem it negative because you have decided it should have a meaning. People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies, for the sole reason that they do not want to accept that life has no absolute meaning. Even the idea of leaving your mark to the world is short-sighted selfcentredness, because in a long enough timescale people will even forget about Einstein. No, what is pessimistic and aberrant is this very human notion that life must have meaning. Just embrace the reality of it. There is none. No one really cares or judge you at the end. It is such a happy and freeing platform to build your life around, rather than going through life silently cursing a God that by not existing, forgot to give you meaning. Go through your own spiritual ego death. Then go do whatever you feel like doing, free from any shackles.
- scubbo 2y ago
  I suspect you have misinterpreted the meaning (a-ha :P ) of the word "negative", here. It was not (I claim) used to imply "pessimistic, depressing, upsetting", but rather - literally - to mean "an answer which is 'no, null, empty, not-a-thing'". I'll freely admit that I didn't read to the _end_ of the article - but I got about halfway through, and I didn't detect any sense of disappointment from the author regarding their "negative" answer (nor, conversely, a yearning for a "positive" answer).
- photonthug 2y ago
  > People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies Well they are, and embracing them rather than entertaining them is probably a good way to get the soul-sickness. What you're describing sounds closer to Existentialism. It gets put into this group sometimes too, but I don't think that's correct. My interpretation is that it's a more optimistic alternative where meaning exists, but it is fundamentally subjective & completely personal. Embracing existentialism may feel like a heavy burden for some, but others will find it liberating since the emphasis is on personal responsibility. Like nihilism and absurdism, it requires no special faith in external things. But like Stoic or Zen traditions, it's actually pretty empowering. Responsibility for your life and its philosophy is a gift and a curse though, because there's so much work to do and that can feel overwhelming. No one is coming for us, we have to save ourselves.
gradschoolfail 2y ago
In the final paragraph, the author concurs with Goethe in 1796. LIFE=LIFE. Schroedinger, who must have been fully cognizant of what Goethe meant (need to check when I have access to my library), went on to then ask the obvious next question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F Amusingly, he prefers the equation ATMAN = BRAHMAN (See wikipedia article)
- codelobe 2y ago
  Ooin called; Wants the Yggdrasil equation back... TREE_LIFE=FILE_TREE The meaning of life is what life is and does. Life experiences reality and message-passes thee grokked data to the future.
wwarner 2y ago
Seems a bit upside down to me -- the Narrative doesn't provide meaning, but rather Meaningful Things drive the Narrative.
kayo_20211030 2y ago
A scattered piece, and it would not have suffered from the attentions of a decent editor. But, the meaning of life is living. It's all we have and it's the grandeur mentioned. There's no universal meaning beyond that, none at all. I and thee are meaningless in any general sense. I think that Camus had it right.
- artemonster 2y ago
  I have barely managed to read through, holy shield! this feels like someone barfed out pretentious BS, sprinkled in some random quotes out of everything loosely related to "meaning of life" and uploaded straight to web without a single proofread.
  - kayo_20211030 2y ago
    +100
Jerrrrry 2y ago
[dead]
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Reminded me that "you might as well live" [1]. Not really an answer though to "What is the meaning of life?" [1] https://poets.org/poem/resume https://poets.org/poem/resume
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
m3kw9 2y ago
Just incase anyone thinks there is supposed to be some sort of universal answer, there isn’t one. Suppose some higher being comes and tells everyone what it supposed to be, I’m not sure if it will change your day to day activities because you are always bound to your physical needs.
samatman 2y ago
Of all the Great Sophomoric Questions, "what is the meaning of life" is the most sophomoric of all. The paradigm case of the sophomoric question. An observation, not a criticism! The author is a professor of philosophy, it is in fact his professional duty to engage with and teach the Great Sophomoric Questions. And nearly all of us were sophomores, once or twice. Some of us, presumably, are sophomores right this instant. Fortunately for all of us, after millennia of searching enquiry, this question, finally, has a definitive answer: the Meaning of Life is a 1983 musical sketch comedy, by the inimitable British troupe of Oxbridge philosophers, Monty Python. While better known for their invention of the most popular programming language in data science, we owe the Pythons a great debt for at last settling this question, once and for all.
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
Shoot, and here I am with my immediate reaction to "What is the meaning of life?" as "To do right by my fellow man". I guess I'll never be one of the cool kids who can honestly answer this question with a deafening silence. Oh, well. I'd rather be happy doing right by my fellow man because that's the point of it all than sitting in a corner ruminating on whether my intuition is misguided.
- robertonoa 2y ago
  Something to consider: subjective good isn't objectively good, and objectively good things are hard to locate.
  - fellowniusmonk 2y ago
    Something to consider. No alternatives actually propose an objective good either. And why does it matter anyway? I'm a moral realist. Everyone seems to advocate that some things are properly basic, I think morality is one of those things.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
    Can't argue against the first point, that distinction is probably true. But contra "hard to locate": Take vision. Suppose you see a cat. Your vision is subjective in a sense... but there's a pretty strong correlation to there actually being a cat. In fact, all of our senses work like that. So it would be surprising if this other felt sense isn't also usually, approximately, but correctly, homing in on objective good. Are there times when what we perceive to be true really is rarely the actual truth? Absolutely -- in deeply abstracted thinking, and over highly complex domains. That seems to me to be more of an argument against trusting the complicated chains of logic that lead one to deny the evidence of their moral senses, though. I've made enough "trivial" mistakes in math class that led to a totally wrong conclusion to be skeptical, and that was back when I could check the right answer with Wolfram|Alpha. (My own deeply abstracted thinking suggests that your moral intuition homes in on objective good similarly to how the processes of markets home in on Pareto efficiency. See how silly that sounds? And yet I can't shake it. It's like making up a conspiracy theory to explain why water is wet!)
andyjohnson0 2y ago
“The meaning of life is that it ends.” - Frantz Kafka No. Inherent. Meaning.
- robertonoa 2y ago
  Too simple to state no objective meaning. Individually, agents can craft meanings to their existence, and collectively agents can agree on meanings to their existence. It happens in real life. I mean, even simplistically human life has meaning beyond nothing. You encapsulate other life within you. Your life necessitates that other life. Your cells replicate, the bacteria and viruses within you do so as well. Your interactions with ecosystem you are part of have chaotic effects that are hard to predict. In some ways, existence necessitates "meaning".
erikpukinskis 2y ago
> What is the meaning of life? …is unanswerable not because life has no meaning, but because the answer is personal. Part of growing up is to answer the question for yourself. For me, part of the meaning of life is to walk in the woods and see as much as I can. Part of the meaning of life is to understand the trauma of my family of origin and take steps forward with my daughter. Part of the meaning of life is to be ambitious and creative and build something lasting and useful, but to not do so in isolation, to be integrated in culture and people I respect. Exactly zero of those may apply to you or anyone else. I’ve been here for 42 years and those are things that seem steady to me. But another person could find radically different meaning. That’s what I think these attempts to define life’s meaning in an essay are doomed to fail. The meaning of life is not a thing in the world. It’s a process we each can embark on, if we so choose.

45 points by benbreen 2y ago

What does this mean for small children, that lack the language and ability to understand abstract notions such as structure required for narratives? What does this mean for mystics, who claim that the most important points in life are beyond narration? How about psychedelic experiences, which in a similar way escape from the constraints of storytelling? In a society where the absolute majority of storytelling happens in advertising, doesn't it carry risks to hinge your personality and belief on this practice? Edit: Ah. "Galen John Strawson (born 1952) is a British analytic philosopher".

yetihehe 2y ago
> What does this mean for small children, that lack the language and ability to understand abstract notions such as structure required for narratives? It means nothing to them. I think they don't care about such trivialities as a meaning of life, they just live it and are happy splashing in a puddle of water (I still remember how happy I was in one pretty big puddle, there was a lot of splashing!). > What does this mean for mystics, who claim that the most important points in life are beyond narration? How about psychedelic experiences, which in a similar way escape from the constraints of storytelling? That's about searching of other narratives when your chosen one isn't working for you. > In a society where the absolute majority of storytelling happens in advertising, doesn't it carry risks to hinge your personality and belief on this practice? Yeah. When you chose a specific meaning of life, you risk it being not aligned with your inner expectations, even worse when you chose a meaning pushed down from people who don't care for your wellbeing. Like with any metaphor of life (life is a game | life is a series of transactions | life is a story | life is life [nah nah, nah, nah nah] ). From article: > More bluntly: it’s certainly not true that all of us are naturally Narrative; not as I understand the notion. Some people are naturally non-Narrative. Some, like myself, are profoundly anti-Narrative. We conform to the eight platitudes, but we don’t in any way conceive of our lives as having the form of a story.
- cess11 2y ago
  I think they'll be surprised and frightened when treated as if their lives lack meaning. What do you mean, "working for you"? Do you consider a meaningful life instrumental in relation to something else, which we have to conclude is meaningless or it would be the meaning of that life? I get the impression that you manifest the risk I was alluding to in my initial comment. There's a huge distance between the person Augustine described in his confessions, notably book 2, about the pear tree, and the kind of 'choosy' personality you describe here. Are you really, really sure about which kind is preferable to you?
  - yetihehe 2y ago
    > What do you mean, "working for you"? Do you consider a meaningful life instrumental in relation to something else, which we have to conclude is meaningless or it would be the meaning of that life? I mean "are you happy with how your life is unfolding". Some people need meaning, some don't. It's up to them. I don't care if other people don't have the same needs as me. I only care that they reflect upon what they need in life and try to either fulfill that needs or try to abandon them if they can't. Having unrealized needs is making us humans unhappy. We can either realize them or try to remove them from our "I need this" list. > There's a huge distance between the person Augustine described in his confessions, notably book 2, about the pear tree, and the kind of 'choosy' personality you describe here. Are you really, really sure about which kind is preferable to you? Sorry, didn't read Augustine, Marcus Aurelius Meditations was my book of choice (when I finally read it, most of what he wrote was pretty evident for me, so I describe myself as self-inflicted stoic, but not a TRUE stoic).
    - cess11 2y ago
      So you're applying different ethics for yourself and others? Because one of the main themes in Meditations is that it's fine to be unhappy as long as you are a good person, living a virtous life. Augustine is kind of _the_ critic of stoicism within virtue ethics in european antiquity. Maybe you're missing out. Have you at least engaged with Aristotle?

apantel 2y ago

> Some rephrase the question: ‘What’s the point or purpose of life?’ I don’t find this helps. It seems like asking ‘What’s the point or purpose of the universe?’ and I think the answer to this question is plain. ‘It has none.’ It has countless possible meanings - whatever we make of it; because meanings are made in the mind. Saying it has no meaning is as silly and non-helpful as saying it has one particular meaning.

poikroequ 2y ago
I agree with you. I like to flip the question and ask the opposite, what would make life meaningless? When you ponder that question, you come to realize it's a very personal and subjective thing. For some people, religion weighs very heavily and would find life meaningless if there is no God. Others may find life meaningless if there were no others, without friends, family, loved ones, all alone. For me personally, life would be meaningless without happiness or joy, positive experiences, if life were nothing but suffering, what would be the point of living? The meaning of life is very much whatever we make of it.
- nathan_compton 2y ago
  I think this is just as useful as nihilism except nihilism has the advantage of being more honest and simpler. People seek meaning in life almost precisely to reduce their freedom to act or not act or to think or not think. Meaning is a constraint on possible action and the desire for meaning is a desire to have that constraint imposed on us by external standards of behavior and thought, by god, by reason, whatever. You can't choose this kind of meaning because you can always choose it differently from one moment to the next. Neither is such a definition of meaning useful for intermediating between human beings in conflict. I don't see the point of answering the question this way.
slothtrop 2y ago
They're saying meaning is not endemic to any such thing. Colloquially when invoking "meaning" the idea that we are the arbiters of it, while true, seems less popular than one where it's absolute, whether discoverable or otherwise. That's not surprising because it's downstream from religion, where we don't get to decide what's meaningful: we are told. It's neither here nor there because what it's really about is a feeling, not a rationalization.

smitty1e 2y ago

> What is the meaning of life? The question always makes my mind go blank. At some point I questioned the word "mind" here as the ultimate scope of the question. Whatever meaning one will find could prove (babble follows) "orthogonal to the existential plane". The mind is great as far as it goes.

largbae 2y ago

You can feel it when you're doing what gives your life meaning. For me, I am at my best when using my skills and resources to serve my family and friends. It could be as simple as hosting a get-together or helping someone move.

tmnvix 2y ago
For me, the meaning of life becomes 'doing the things that are necessary for life'. This is a helpful reminder that I get most satisfaction from those things - cooking, gardening, physical activity, socialising with and helping/nurturing others, etc. In the modern world, most of us 'make a living' by doing quite abstract tasks and fall into the trap of using that income to replace what we think of as mundane tasks with more convenient alternatives (fast food, movies instead of conversation, etc). In a sense, we alienate ourselves from what our lives actually are.

vitiral 2y ago

Words have meaning. Meaning is that which points to something besides itself. Zen is a finger pointing at the moon, do not mistake the finger for the moon. What is the "meaning" of a mountain? What a silly question. The only reason the "meaning of life" seems coherent is because we wrap our very sense of existence in words. Let go of words and definitions and just be. At rest in all that is.

nico 2y ago
Language is a very useful tool. However, it’s also just a model/description of what we experience through our perception It’s hard to let go of language But it’s an amazing experience when we can stop it from mediating or even interrupting, our perception of the present moment Just being, just here, just now Thank you for the reminder
- vitiral 2y ago
  Tools are good servants but bad masters. When you place too much value on the tool you no longer own it, it owns you. Be of one mind with the tool. Use it to complete your purpose. Then, the work complete, put the tool down and walk away. The only path to serenity.
- scubbo 2y ago
  It's been far too long since I've made a regular practice of meditation - thank _you_ for the reminder.

sph 2y ago

> What is the meaning of life? The question always makes my mind go blank. Then a negative answer comes. It has none. Having no answer is not negative. You deem it negative because you have decided it should have a meaning. People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies, for the sole reason that they do not want to accept that life has no absolute meaning. Even the idea of leaving your mark to the world is short-sighted selfcentredness, because in a long enough timescale people will even forget about Einstein. No, what is pessimistic and aberrant is this very human notion that life must have meaning. Just embrace the reality of it. There is none. No one really cares or judge you at the end. It is such a happy and freeing platform to build your life around, rather than going through life silently cursing a God that by not existing, forgot to give you meaning. Go through your own spiritual ego death. Then go do whatever you feel like doing, free from any shackles.

scubbo 2y ago
I suspect you have misinterpreted the meaning (a-ha :P ) of the word "negative", here. It was not (I claim) used to imply "pessimistic, depressing, upsetting", but rather - literally - to mean "an answer which is 'no, null, empty, not-a-thing'". I'll freely admit that I didn't read to the _end_ of the article - but I got about halfway through, and I didn't detect any sense of disappointment from the author regarding their "negative" answer (nor, conversely, a yearning for a "positive" answer).
photonthug 2y ago
> People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies Well they are, and embracing them rather than entertaining them is probably a good way to get the soul-sickness. What you're describing sounds closer to Existentialism. It gets put into this group sometimes too, but I don't think that's correct. My interpretation is that it's a more optimistic alternative where meaning exists, but it is fundamentally subjective & completely personal. Embracing existentialism may feel like a heavy burden for some, but others will find it liberating since the emphasis is on personal responsibility. Like nihilism and absurdism, it requires no special faith in external things. But like Stoic or Zen traditions, it's actually pretty empowering. Responsibility for your life and its philosophy is a gift and a curse though, because there's so much work to do and that can feel overwhelming. No one is coming for us, we have to save ourselves.

gradschoolfail 2y ago

In the final paragraph, the author concurs with Goethe in 1796. LIFE=LIFE. Schroedinger, who must have been fully cognizant of what Goethe meant (need to check when I have access to my library), went on to then ask the obvious next question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F Amusingly, he prefers the equation ATMAN = BRAHMAN (See wikipedia article)

codelobe 2y ago
Ooin called; Wants the Yggdrasil equation back... TREE_LIFE=FILE_TREE The meaning of life is what life is and does. Life experiences reality and message-passes thee grokked data to the future.

wwarner 2y ago

Seems a bit upside down to me -- the Narrative doesn't provide meaning, but rather Meaningful Things drive the Narrative.

kayo_20211030 2y ago

A scattered piece, and it would not have suffered from the attentions of a decent editor. But, the meaning of life is living. It's all we have and it's the grandeur mentioned. There's no universal meaning beyond that, none at all. I and thee are meaningless in any general sense. I think that Camus had it right.

artemonster 2y ago
I have barely managed to read through, holy shield! this feels like someone barfed out pretentious BS, sprinkled in some random quotes out of everything loosely related to "meaning of life" and uploaded straight to web without a single proofread.
- kayo_20211030 2y ago
  +100

Jerrrrry 2y ago

[dead]

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Reminded me that "you might as well live" [1]. Not really an answer though to "What is the meaning of life?" [1] https://poets.org/poem/resume https://poets.org/poem/resume

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

m3kw9 2y ago

Just incase anyone thinks there is supposed to be some sort of universal answer, there isn’t one. Suppose some higher being comes and tells everyone what it supposed to be, I’m not sure if it will change your day to day activities because you are always bound to your physical needs.

samatman 2y ago

Of all the Great Sophomoric Questions, "what is the meaning of life" is the most sophomoric of all. The paradigm case of the sophomoric question. An observation, not a criticism! The author is a professor of philosophy, it is in fact his professional duty to engage with and teach the Great Sophomoric Questions. And nearly all of us were sophomores, once or twice. Some of us, presumably, are sophomores right this instant. Fortunately for all of us, after millennia of searching enquiry, this question, finally, has a definitive answer: the Meaning of Life is a 1983 musical sketch comedy, by the inimitable British troupe of Oxbridge philosophers, Monty Python. While better known for their invention of the most popular programming language in data science, we owe the Pythons a great debt for at last settling this question, once and for all.

hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago

Shoot, and here I am with my immediate reaction to "What is the meaning of life?" as "To do right by my fellow man". I guess I'll never be one of the cool kids who can honestly answer this question with a deafening silence. Oh, well. I'd rather be happy doing right by my fellow man because that's the point of it all than sitting in a corner ruminating on whether my intuition is misguided.

robertonoa 2y ago
Something to consider: subjective good isn't objectively good, and objectively good things are hard to locate.
- fellowniusmonk 2y ago
  Something to consider. No alternatives actually propose an objective good either. And why does it matter anyway? I'm a moral realist. Everyone seems to advocate that some things are properly basic, I think morality is one of those things.
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
  Can't argue against the first point, that distinction is probably true. But contra "hard to locate": Take vision. Suppose you see a cat. Your vision is subjective in a sense... but there's a pretty strong correlation to there actually being a cat. In fact, all of our senses work like that. So it would be surprising if this other felt sense isn't also usually, approximately, but correctly, homing in on objective good. Are there times when what we perceive to be true really is rarely the actual truth? Absolutely -- in deeply abstracted thinking, and over highly complex domains. That seems to me to be more of an argument against trusting the complicated chains of logic that lead one to deny the evidence of their moral senses, though. I've made enough "trivial" mistakes in math class that led to a totally wrong conclusion to be skeptical, and that was back when I could check the right answer with Wolfram|Alpha. (My own deeply abstracted thinking suggests that your moral intuition homes in on objective good similarly to how the processes of markets home in on Pareto efficiency. See how silly that sounds? And yet I can't shake it. It's like making up a conspiracy theory to explain why water is wet!)

andyjohnson0 2y ago

“The meaning of life is that it ends.” - Frantz Kafka No. Inherent. Meaning.

robertonoa 2y ago
Too simple to state no objective meaning. Individually, agents can craft meanings to their existence, and collectively agents can agree on meanings to their existence. It happens in real life. I mean, even simplistically human life has meaning beyond nothing. You encapsulate other life within you. Your life necessitates that other life. Your cells replicate, the bacteria and viruses within you do so as well. Your interactions with ecosystem you are part of have chaotic effects that are hard to predict. In some ways, existence necessitates "meaning".

erikpukinskis 2y ago

> What is the meaning of life? …is unanswerable not because life has no meaning, but because the answer is personal. Part of growing up is to answer the question for yourself. For me, part of the meaning of life is to walk in the woods and see as much as I can. Part of the meaning of life is to understand the trauma of my family of origin and take steps forward with my daughter. Part of the meaning of life is to be ambitious and creative and build something lasting and useful, but to not do so in isolation, to be integrated in culture and people I respect. Exactly zero of those may apply to you or anyone else. I’ve been here for 42 years and those are things that seem steady to me. But another person could find radically different meaning. That’s what I think these attempts to define life’s meaning in an essay are doomed to fail. The meaning of life is not a thing in the world. It’s a process we each can embark on, if we so choose.