The Meaning of Life: PML, LML & GML

[Upisoft]

Let me make some definitions.

"Personal meaning of life" (PML) is the relationship of oneself current state of existence with oneself desired state of existence. Both change with time thus PML changes with time.

"Local meaning of life" (LML) is the relationship of everyone actions taken during their lifetime with current state of existence of others. LML changes current state of existence of others, thus possibly changing their PML.

Let's say the cosmologists are correct and the universe will continue to expand and the stars continue to burn their fuel until dark and mostly empty universe comes into existence. At some point in the future the universe will have so small energy able to do work that the life will not be possible. Let me define the "Global meaning of life" (GML) as the relationship of all PML and LML available during the lifetime of the Universe at this point. Well it is pretty clear that no matter what PML and LML were in the past they change nothing for that future point in time. It will still be dark, empty and lifeless.

So, no matter what you wish what you do what you see, the outcome is not changed. Globally there is no point to take any action at all, as it accomplishes nothing. In this sense the life is meaningless.

 

[cronxeh]

You are trying to draw conclusions between disjoint events and objects, while making assumptions about your own existence. Herein lies the flaw with your logic, you seem to think that you are in control and totally aware of your own existence, but in point of principle you seem totally clueless as to what your purpose is. Without knowing your own purpose, you can not know the purpose of others, and without knowing the collective purpose you can not make logical conclusions about the purpose as a whole. Which brings us to the inevitable conclusion, that the meaning has always been there, it is the driving force behind your question, is it the invisible variable that is constantly gnawing away at your subconscious, it is the essence that makes emergence possible.

 

[Boy@n]

There's more than what we see.

I recall a little story...

Listeners ask the speaker to show them God, if he's so sure there is one. He switcehs the lights off so all are in darkness and asks, can you see your hands?

Physical Universe might be just one type of existence of many...

 

[waht]

First of all, the phrase 'what is the meaning of life?' is ambiguous, and a biased question. It is like saying, and I quote Tyson, 'What is a square root of a pork chop?' The sentence is correct grammatically, but it doesn't compute and it is incongruous.

There is the same incongruity and ambiguity in the "meaning of life."

The closest it could mean is 'What is the definition of life?' Then in that case, look up 'life' in the dictionary.

Other times 'meaning' implies 'intention' or a 'reason' behind something. And an 'intention' and 'reason' implies existence of an intelligent being or a creator. And so 'meaning of life' is a biased question because it assumes the existence of some intelligent being, or God if you will, and then asks something along the lines (ambiguity) of 'why is there life?' or the 'reason why you here?'

Then a contradiction occurs when you say there is no meaning in life because you just negated your assumption of existence of an intelligence being that set up the question in the first place.

 

[Upisoft]

You are quite correct that I'm seeking answer why my logic is flawed. I'm sorry if that was not obvious for others. Anyway philosophy is not what I'm best at, and I guess I'm prone to logical errors. (Maybe that is even overstatement, I could be terrible at it, but I'll let others to judge this.)

You are trying to draw conclusions between disjoint events and objects, while making assumptions about your own existence.

I don't see how the events and objects can be disjoint. They all obey to laws of physics.

And of course I make assumptions. Without assumptions you have no information to process, thus you have no conclusion. Rather we can discuss if my assumptions are justified.

Herein lies the flaw with your logic, you seem to think that you are in control and totally aware of your own existence, but in point of principle you seem totally clueless as to what your purpose is.

Define "purpose" please. In my terms "purpose" is the relation between any action taken, the current state and the goal state. Purpose of an object is the action currently associated with it. So the purpose of the hammer is nailing a nail if you currently happen to do that. It can also be helping two pieces to glue together, if you don't have any other heavy object that can do the same.

So if I am in control then I define my actions and therefore their purpose. But if you insist that I myself have a purpose unattached to my control then there must exist subject/being that is using/controlling me and thus defining my purpose. Since I have no empirical evidence of existence of such being I assume there is none. So yes. I think I am in control and I have no purpose at the same time.

Without knowing your own purpose, you can not know the purpose of others, and without knowing the collective purpose you can not make logical conclusions about the purpose as a whole. Which brings us to the inevitable conclusion, that the meaning has always been there, it is the driving force behind your question, is it the invisible variable that is constantly gnawing away at your subconscious, it is the essence that makes emergence possible.

Now you make assumption that there is purpose in our existence. I already told you what I think of that. Also even if I'm wrong and you are right your conclusion what is the driving force behind my question is incorrect. It is possibility but it is not the only possibility.

 

[cronxeh]

Your conclusion is that there is no meaning to life. My conclusion is that there does not need to be one, it has an emergent property, and that emergence is the 'meaning' you think of.

 

[Evo]

Life has a meaning to each person, individually. What I consider meaningful may have no meaning for any other being. Even if your meaning is that your life has no purpose, that's your meaning. There cannot be, IMO, a meaning of life that applies to more than the individual. We're not talking about the purpose of a group, or the influence a group has.

Since I don't believe in an afterlife, this is a one time only deal, so if the end of the Earth means the end of humans, it doesn't matter.

See, this is why I need to stay out of philosophy. I have been labeled "black and white woman", no gray area for me.

 

[jackmell]

Regarding the OP concern:

You mean "is there any meaning to life?" or "why does life exists in the Universe?" Why do stars? Galaxies? Clusters?

The Universe began with a particular set of conditions and that initiated a physics, a biology, and an intellect pondering the cause, the meaning, and purpose of things. But the purpose emerges from the beginning, the "purpose" of that physics, that chemistry, that life is a reflection, a manifestation and emergent property of those early initial conditions which gave rise to our particular Universe.

 

[Upisoft]

There's more than what we see.

I recall a little story...

Listeners ask the speaker to show them God, if he's so sure there is one. He switcehs the lights off so all are in darkness and asks, can you see your hands?

Physical Universe might be just one type of existence of many...

You can be absolutely right, but I'm not willing to make conclusions on speculations. The speaker did not show them God, he merely showed their lack of knowledge. And as I already said, if you have no knowledge you cannot provide conclusions.

 

[Upisoft]

Your conclusion is that there is no meaning to life. My conclusion is that there does not need to be one, it has an emergent property, and that emergence is the 'meaning' you think of.

I tend to agree with you, but I have to ask you about the emergent property you are talking about. What is the relationship between the emergent property and life? If life cease to exist does that mean the emergent property will also cease to exist or it will continue to exist expressed by other means that life?

 

[Upisoft]

First of all, the phrase 'what is the meaning of life?' is ambiguous, and a biased question. It is like saying, and I quote Tyson, 'What is a square root of a pork chop?' The sentence is correct grammatically, but it doesn't compute and it is incongruous.

There is the same incongruity and ambiguity in the "meaning of life."

The closest it could mean is 'What is the definition of life?' Then in that case, look up 'life' in the dictionary.

Well, I'll try to define it unambiguously. The meaning of life is the difference between its existence and non existence. In other words, if some kind of total disaster destroys all life on Earth will there be any difference? Of course locally there is difference. Say an alien ship may pop up and the captain may start to ask questions like: "WTF just happened?" or "Why did you push that button, you destroyed the planet!?". But globally will it matter after 10^100 billions of years or more when there is no more life anyway? What will be the difference? Frankly I don't see any.

 

[cronxeh]

Buddy, this "i agree with you, but you are wrong" arguing technique you've picked up from Dale Carnegie or his derivatives is extremely annoying.

Emergent properties: from nonliving matter comes living matter, from neurons arises consciousness, from chaos comes order, from the abstract - a clearly defined solution

 

[Upisoft]

Life has a meaning to each person, individually. What I consider meaningful may have no meaning for any other being. Even if your meaning is that your life has no purpose, that's your meaning. There cannot be, IMO, a meaning of life that applies to more than the individual. We're not talking about the purpose of a group, or the influence a group has.

Well, that is what I call "personal meaning of life"(PML) in your own words. At least you agree that such thing exists. However I don't agree there is no LML. If a hypothetical disaster happens to kill everyone and everything except you, you will not wave with your hand and say something like: "Whatever..."; Well at least I hope so..

Since I don't believe in an afterlife, this is a one time only deal, so if the end of the Earth means the end of humans, it doesn't matter.

See, this is why I need to stay out of philosophy. I have been labeled "black and white woman", no gray area for me.

Well, maybe you will say: "Whatever.." after all

 

[Evo]

Well, I'll try to define it unambiguously. The meaning of life is the difference between its existence and non existence. In other words, if some kind of total disaster destroys all life on Earth will there be any difference? Of course locally there is difference. Say an alien ship may pop up and the captain may start to ask questions like: "WTF just happened?" or "Why did you push that button, you destroyed the planet!?". But globally will it matter after 10^100 billions of years or more when there is no more life anyway? What will be the difference? Frankly I don't see any.

The meaning of one's life is not affected by it's end. All lives end, this does not mean they had no meaning.

You seem to lack a basic understanding of this simple fact.

Do you actually have a point to discuss? If you do, please post it now so the rest of us can be enlightened. People die, that has nothing to do with the meaning of a person's life.

 

[DanP]

You are a sorry piece of proteins. Not very different by a bacteria. You want meaning ? Make a difference through your deeds.

 

[Upisoft]

Buddy, this "i agree with you, but you are wrong" arguing technique you've picked up from Dale Carnegie or his derivatives is extremely annoying.

Emergent properties: from nonliving matter comes living matter, from neurons arises consciousness, from chaos comes order, from the abstract - a clearly defined solution

Sorry I have annoyed you, it was not my intend to do so. I did this on my own and I didn't pick it from anyone else. Anyway it was not "i agree with you, but you are wrong"... it was more like "I want to agree with with you, but I cannot, because I cannot understand you".

So emergent properties cannot exist on their own, meaning living matter cannot exist without nonliving matter, etc. Did I get it right?

 

[Evo]

Sorry I have annoyed you, it was not my intend to do so. I did this on my own and I didn't pick it from anyone else. Anyway it was not "i agree with you, but you are wrong"... it was more like "I want to agree with with you, but I cannot, because I cannot understand you".

So emergent properties cannot exist on their own, meaning living matter cannot exist without nonliving matter, etc. Did I get it right?

What is your point Upisoft? Explain why a life cannot have meaning because the person will die.

All I see is you pushing your opinion, which means this doesn't qualify for a thread here, you need to put this in your blog.

 

[Upisoft]

The meaning of one's life is not affected by it's end. All lives end, this does not mean they had no meaning.

You seem to lack a basic understanding of this simple fact.

Do you actually have a point to discuss? If you do, please post it now so the rest of us can be enlightened. People die, that has nothing to do with the meaning of a person's life.

It looks you cannot understand me. I never said that ending one's life affects its meaning. In fact that is one of the reasons I tried to define LML. You do what you do and you die and your actions continue to affect people after your death. If you compare this scenario with the hypothetical case when you have never existed there will be differences. These differences define your LML and they exist in space as well as in time.

But when I tried to continue with this process of globalization and define GML as the difference between existence of life and non existence of life at point far far in the future, there seem to be no difference from that point further into the future.

 

[Evo]

Ok, post your thoughts in your blog please.