The Search for Meaning

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Sun Aug 25, 2024 11:03 pm

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

For some thinkers the possibility of cosmic purpose has been revived by the very science that had seemed to have killed it. This resurrection is rooted in the discovery that the laws of physics must be fine-tuned to an unimaginable degree for there to be a universe that could generate and sustain life (or even the chemical complexity preceding life).

Though not unimaginable to God, perhaps? And yet when we move away from religion here and imagine that "all there is" has either 1] simply always existed or 2] came into existence -- out of what? -- in the Big Bang, how can that not even be more astonishing -- ineffable? -- still?

Yes, some are able to connect the dots in their heads between the human condition and a Divine universe. Though -- click -- I'm not one of them. And I always come back to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

In other words, God or No God, if there is a teleological purpose behind the existence of existence itself then, here on Earth, it would certainly seem to be manifesting itself rather sadistically.

Just how fine the tuning has to be is illustrated by the fact that the amount of dark energy in empty space – the so-called ‘cosmological constant’ or ‘vacuum energy’ – must be more than zero, but not greater than 10-122 units. This is necessary to ensure that the universe neither collapsed in on itself nor blew itself apart before clumping into habitable planets. The physicist Luke Barnes calculates that the odds of getting a universe fine-tuned for life are 1 in 10135.

Here things get tricky as well, however, because even scientists embody Rummy's Rule. They speculate about things like dark matter and dark energy, but are still at a loss to explain them. In fact, on a Nova documentary a few years back, some astrophysicists speculated that what dark energy and dark matter really reflect is what we still don't grasp about gravity itself.

As for this part...

The physicist Luke Barnes calculates that the odds of getting a universe fine-tuned for life are 1 in 10135.

...most of us are in the same boat: if they [the scientists] say so.

In the interim what might philosophers be able to contribute here in regard to the mystery of biological matter itself?

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Thu Aug 29, 2024 12:04 am

Meaning

“Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning.” Osho

More to the point, historically, to enforce it.

“Meaning is produced not only by the relationship between the signifier and the signified but also, crucially, by the position of the signifiers in relation to other signifiers.” Jacques Lacan

know, I know: they don't know when to stop!

“The hardest things to talk about are the ones we ourselves can't understand.” Elena Ferrante

On the other hand, isn't that what the bots are for?

"I've come to the conclusion that the artist can not justify life or come up with a cogent reason as to why life is meaningful, but the artist can provide you with a cold glass of water on a hot day.” Woody Allen

Next up: the con artists?
fArtists I think some call them.

“But does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end-and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with a kind of joy? To try to make some meaning out of all this seems unbelievably quaint. Maybe I only see a pattern because I've been staring too long. But then again, to paraphrase Boris, maybe I see a pattern because it's there.” Donna Tartt

Let's finally settle this: blah, blah, blah?

“We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Next up: the unbearable lightness of prayer itself.

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Sun Sep 01, 2024 2:12 am

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

To some [the above from Luke Barnes] suggests that how things are in the universe is not a matter of chance. Things must have been rigged.

On the other hand, the gap between suggesting something like this given the existence of God seems very, very different [to me] than arguing that "by chance" in a No God universe matter and energy just, well, happened?!

Philip Goff develops this suggestion in his eye-popping Why? The Purpose of the Universe (2023). According to his ‘Value-Selection Hypothesis’, at least some of the fixed numbers in physics “are as they are because they allow for a universe containing things of significant value”.

How wide are your eyes popping? And what pops mine are not general descriptions like this [cosmogony], but the actual mind-boggling reality of numbers like this:

Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles a second. That is about 6,000,000,000,000 miles a year.

The closest star to us is Alpha Centauri. It is 4.75 light-years away. 28,500,000,000,000 miles.

So, traveling at 186,000 miles a second, it would take us 4.75 years to reach it. The voyager spacecraft [just now exiting our solar system] will take 70,000 years to reach it.

To reach the center of the Milky Way galaxy it would take 100,000 light-years.

Or consider this:

"To get to the closest galaxy to ours, the Canis Major Dwarf, at Voyager's speed, it would take approximately 749,000,000 years to travel the distance of 25,000 light years! If we could travel at the speed of light, it would still take 25,000 years!"

The Andromeda galaxy is 2.537 million light years away.

How about this:

Those here who connect the dots between meaning in their own individual lives and one or another rendition of Pantheism...? How exactly do you go about connecting the dots between one and the other?

Also, one suspects that when it comes to interpreting even cosmological facts, astrophysicists reach the point where [in regard to the very, very large and the very, very small] it's a crapshoot. Just one derived from the "scientific method" rather than encompassed in a "world of words".

Those ‘things of significant value’ include, most importantly, human beings, and whatever is necessary to enable them to survive, and even flourish.

Okay, let's bring that down to Earth. Over the centuries, we have had an endless succession of moral, political and spiritual paths from which to choose. And, in fact, it's not conflict over cosmological constants that pummel us. When's the last time an actual war broke out over dark energy or dark matter. Or, for that matter, the Big Bang, Inflation, Deflation, Black Holes, Event Horizons, etc,.

And [of course?] presuming that one day science is able to pin this down -- click -- the part where it is either in sync with your own One True Path or it isn't?

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Wed Sep 04, 2024 2:06 am

Meaning

“Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old fillms, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to death.” Salman Rushdie.

See, I told you.

“The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.” Chris Hedges

Indeed. Recall the great wars here.

“In the recumbence of depression, your information-gathering system collates its intelligence and reports to you these facts: (1) there is nothing to do; (2) there is nowhere to go; (3) there is nothing to be; (4) there is no one to know. Without meaning-charged emotions keeping your brain on the straight and narrow, you would lose your balance and fall into an abyss of lucidity. And for a conscious being, lucidity is a cocktail without ingredients, a crystal clear concoction that will leave you hung over with reality. In perfect knowledge there is only perfect nothingness, which is perfectly painful if what you want is meaning in your life.” Thomas Ligotti

Unless, of course, he's wrong.

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.” Jack Gilbert

Don't get us started!

“I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.” Vincent Van Gogh

Or you can just grab a bite to eat.

“…Our sunsets have been reduced to wavelengths and frequencies. The complexities of the universe have been shredded into mathematical equations. Even our self-worth as human beings has been destroyed.” Dan Brown

And it's all right there in the da Vinci code.

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Fri Sep 06, 2024 10:23 pm

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

This [the above], then, is the new case for Cosmic Purpose: that the constants of the universe are so unlikely they must have been laid down with an end in sight rather than just occurring randomly at the beginning of the universe.

For some theistic thinkers, this licenses God’s return from the more than a century of exile into which He (or She) had been banished after the scientific revolution filtered through to culture.

For other theistic thinkers, however, this licences God's to go on doing anything -- anything -- that He or She or It deems is necessary to sustain whatever mere mortals may or may not know about this Divine Plan. Besides, if a Supreme Being does in fact exist, there's not much we can do about whatever unfolds.

But not for Goff, who reminds us of the problem of evil. He argues that what he calls the ‘Cosmic Sin Intuition’ – the idea that it would be immoral for an all-powerful being to create a universe like ours that is so filled with suffering – rules out the existence of God, or at any rate a God who is both omnipotent and good.

Of course, unless and until a God, the God chooses to manifest a Divine presence in our day to day lives, we can think ourselves into believing whatever we want to believe.

Whatever, for instance, comforts and consoles us?

And for most religionists what they want to believe is that if they follow the righteous path of their own God here and now, they will be rewarded with a continuation of that path for all the rest of eternity.

While this does not exclude an evil God, for whom the suffering of sentient creatures was the twisted purpose of His (or Her) creation, for Goff it is sufficient to rule out what he calls an ‘Omni-God’.

And I'll bet he has tons of hard evidence to back all this up. An 'omni-mere mortal', perhaps?

promethean75 · Post by **promethean75** » Sat Sep 07, 2024 3:53 pm

"You tell me why, given the above, that purpose doesn't revolve around...sadism?"

If he's a sadist, he's either not omnipotent or he is and is practicing favoritism.

There are many people who never suffer a day in their lives, so if he's a sadist, he's not all powerful. On the other hand, he may have certain favorites that he doesn't make suffer, but could if he wanted. Like those filthy rich nephews of the cartel drug lords that live in the lap of luxury becuz of all the money uncle Gonzales is pullin in. He may like guys like this while he hates six year old kids dying of cancer in a hospital room. The guy's pretty fucked up as u can see so it's hard to say.

attofishpi · Post by **attofishpi** » Fri Sep 13, 2024 11:26 am

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀..there's the meaning in life, right there - I found it---> "MEANING"

..turned out it was just a word, meaning recursively upon itself nothing much in particular at all really.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

attofishpi · Post by **attofishpi** » Sat Sep 14, 2024 6:31 pm

Oh no, turns out the MEANING is white (don't tell FlashimnotracistbutyouareifyouareflyinganEnglandflag)

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.MEANING

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Sun Sep 15, 2024 1:23 am

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

Pan’s Purposes

Goff mobilises his panpsychist views to support his argument in favour of a cosmic purpose. The universe, he tells us, is made of fundamental particles, each blessed with a rudimentary consciousness and proto-agency, such that they are “disposed from their own nature, to respond rationally to their experience.”

I'm sorry, but it always boggles my mind how others are able to think up things like this. In other words, given The Gap and Rummy's Rule. It's like those who argue, in turn, that rocks or trees have consciousness. Yeah, maybe they do. But, please, give me something more than just an argument.

On the other hand, some will insist, this is no less applicable to my own intellectual contraptions here. True enough. Which is why it is all that more important to bring the arguments down to Earth.

Goff made the case for panpsychism in Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (which I discussed in Philosophy Now 135). His central argument was that the one material object we know from within (so we have access to its intrinsic properties) is our brain, and that object is of course conscious. From this he believes it is legitimate to infer that consciousness is universally present in matter.

The irony or quandary or conundrum here [for me] is that all we really have to pin down the brain is the brain itself. And if human brains do in fact have intrinsic properties, how on Earth does one explain the terrible conflicts that every now and then catapult us into calamitous world wars.

And, of course, without an accumulation of hard evidence, lots and lots of things can be inferred academically in a "world of words".

There are many difficulties with this argument. The most obvious is that of extrapolating from our brains to the universe at (very) large. There is also the so-called ‘subject-summing’ problem: how it is that the billions of micro-consciousnesses putatively associated with fundamental particles add up to the macro-consciousness of subjects like you and me?

I'm not entirely sure what this means "for all practical purposes" but how far back can we take consciousness in regard to ourselves. Does each individual atom in our body/brain have a consciousness?
How about these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subatomic_particle

Then back to the part where in regard to the either/or world, we have been able with extraordinary precision to describe the world around us objectively, while consciousness in the world of conflicting goods is still grappling to...to do what?

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Mon Sep 16, 2024 10:26 pm

Meaning

“Everything on the radio is crap...It's fast food for your ears. It doesn't make you think. It isn't even about anything - not anything real. Don't you think music should say something?” Hannah Harrington

And then there's talk -- squawk -- radio.

“These songs tell me I'm not alone. If you look at it that way, music...music can see you through anything.” Hannah Harrington

Anyone here still believe that?

“We have an odd relationship with words. We learn a few when we are small, throughout our lives we collect others through education, conversation, our contact with books, and yet, in comparison, there are only a tiny number about whose meaning, sense, and denotation we would have absolutely no doubts, if one day, we were to ask ourselves seriously what they meant. Thus we affirm and deny, thus we convince and are convinced, thus we argue, deduce, and conclude, wandering fearlessly over the surface of concepts about which we only have the vaguest of ideas, and, despite the false air of confidence that we generally affect as we feel our way along the road in verbal darkness, we manage, more or less, to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.” José Saramago

Anyone here still believe that?

“Death is only meaningless if it does not change us." James Islington

Oh, it changes us, alright.

“God, it's like reality's completely shifted on me. I used to think I was standing on such solid ground. If I wanted something badly enough, I just worked like hell for it. Now I can't decide what to do, which move to make. All the things I counted on aren't there for me anymore.” Tess Gerritsen

Of course, that could never happen to you.

“Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word, not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.” José Saramago

You first.

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Fri Sep 20, 2024 8:48 pm

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

These unresolved issues [above] do not inhibit Goff from building on panpsychism and embracing its central thesis in Why?. With consciousness, he claims, comes purpose

Okay, back to the acting profession? We watch something on TV or we watch a film at the theatre. Or we see a live performance up on the stage. The purpose of the plot and the dialogue however can have little or nothing to do with the actors themselves. Instead, they are often predicated entirely on the director's assessment of the world around us. A director, say, who also wrote the script. Or it might go back to the author of a book or a screenplay. What's crucial, however [for me], is how we can dupe ourselves into confusing the role [and the politics] that a particular actor is playing with the actor him or herself. Only some determinists among us take it further out on the metaphysical limb. How? By arguing that even the director, the screenwriter and/or the author him/herself are no less entirely scripted by Nature itself...the creator of everything?

Only the universe creating everything would seem to be all that much more problematic. As opposed to one or another God and religion. In other words, how would one go about attributing a teleology to, say, the brute facticity of the Big Bang.

The laws of nature have goals built into them, and those goals can be universal because consciousness is also universal: “fine-tuning and rational matter fit together like a key fits the lock it was made for”.

Sheer speculation? Of course, up to a point, it has to be given how much more we need to discover about human consciousness itself.

Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg’s notorious assertion that “the more we comprehend the universe, the more meaningless it seems” is here turned on its head. Courtesy of physics, the totality of things is seen to be radiant and that consciousness is imbued with consciousness.

And yet we can imagine all sorts of amazing discoveries that will be made over the centuries to come. On the other hand, how many of us will still be around? So, many will go to the grave convinced that what they think they understand about the universe "here and now" really, really is The Way It Is.

Here and in Heaven?

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Sun Sep 22, 2024 1:34 am

Meaning

“When I reached the street I didn't know whether to go right or left. Soon I'd have to start acting like a person who cared about what happened to him.” Denis Johnson

Wow, does that take me back.

“After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the couch, he remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him [as a career counselor] was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited--long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms--what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true 'calling.” Alain de Botton

Fortunately, however, we did all end up here.

“To live, is to suffer. To survive, well, that's to find meaning in the suffer.” DMX

Of course, he only had about 50 years to figure this out himself.
Did he?

“We possess art lest we perish of the truth.” Friedrich Nietzsche

He means religion, of course.

“So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason — to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?" Molly asks when Vivian reads some of these stories aloud.
"It certainly helps," Vivian says.” Christina Baker Kline

Want me to read you mine?

“Work should be personal. For all of us. Not just for the artist and entrepreneur. Work should have meaning for the accountant, the construction worker, the technologist, the manager and the clerk.” Howard Schultz

What we got instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Thu Sep 26, 2024 9:15 pm

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

Applying the idea of purpose to the totality of things cries out for examination.

The idea of purpose, perhaps. But connecting ideas to something that can be sustained socially and politically and economically?

Again, let's focus in on the part where someone insists the purpose of life is encompassed only in being on the One True Path. You're not on it? Well, let them tell you the price you might pay if you don't get on it. And then those who insist that some will never be permitted to become "one of us" because given the color of their skin or their gender or their sexual orientation or the God they worship, they're lucky they're not sent to a reeducation camp or to a gulag or to a gas chamber.

Most obviously, there is a ‘purpose-summing’ problem analogous to the subject-summing problem. The most typical loci of purpose in the universe are individual conscious beings – which, even if we (momentarily) allow panpsychism, are still minute entities scattered rather scantily through a mostly empty universe, that in the case of human beings is 130,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times as wide as they are.

Is this another example of just how unimaginably vast the gap is between "I" and "all there is"? We can try, but how do we wrap our heads around numbers like that? What does it even mean? How was it even calculated?

And then the idea of the multiverse. Reconfiguring "an infinite number of universes" into whatever meaning our own might encompass.

And, of course, who can leave out the quantum world?

Moreover, many features of purpose as manifested in biological creatures such as us, in whom those features are most elaborated, are incompatible with the idea of universality. Expressions of purpose in my life – and, I have no doubt, in yours – are localized, transient, and often conflicting.

Not really sure what he is suggesting here in regard to purpose. But how would you connect the dots between "the purpose of my life" and something in the vicinity of a "universal purpose".

Click of course.

As for those "localized, transient, and often conflicting" purposes each of us as individuals might acquire and sustain, start here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-man ... sein/31641
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/moral ... live/45989

Also, whose idea of universality? And all we have in the way of arguments are those we are familiar with on planet Earth. Who knows how many millions of additional civilizations there might be "out there".

They relate to the real and imaginary needs of an individual who is situated in, makes sense of, and interacts with, a minute speck of reality. It is difficult to see how unified cosmic purpose can be so dispersed, and so granulated.

On the other hand, bring meaning and purpose back around to an omniscient and omnipotent God, and, just like that, there is nothing at all that can't be explained [eventually] given His "mysterious ways".

So, I ask myself, how, given arguments like the one above, are all those Gods still around? You know my own conjectures here.

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Mon Sep 30, 2024 6:24 am

Meaning

“Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding.” Werner Karl Heisenberg

Not once we have the definition though, right?

“August: You know, somethings don't matter that much...like the color of a house...But lifting a person's heart--now that matters. The whole problem with people--"
Lily: They don't know what matters and what doesn't...
August:...They know what matters, but they don't choose it...The hardest thing on earth is to choose what matters.” Sue Monk Kidd

No, really, what does still matter?

“The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.” Niels Bohr

Yeah, that's one way of looking at it.
Of course, there are lots and lots and lots of other ways too.

“There’s a drive in a lost soul—in one that is searching for acceptance, companionship, belonging, whatever you want to call it. The slightest coincidence ignites a spark that one hopes will lead to something meaningful.” Doug Cooper

Actually, this is a real thing.

“Where words lose their meaning, people lose their lives.” Confucius

Let's just hope that never happens here.

“Not only are there meaningless questions, but many of the problems with which the human intellect has tortured itself turn out to be only 'pseudo problems,' because they can be formulated only in terms of questions which are meaningless. Many of the traditional problems of philosophy, of religion, or of ethics, are of this character. Consider, for example, the problem of the freedom of the will. You maintain that you are free to take either the right- or the left-hand fork in the road. I defy you to set up a single objective criterion by which you can prove after you have made the turn that you might have made the other. The problem has no meaning in the sphere of objective activity; it only relates to my personal subjective feelings while making the decision.” Percy Williams Bridgman

How can it not be crucial to determine if the things we think, feel, say and do, we think, feel, say and do them with at least some measure of autonomy?

iambiguous · Post by **iambiguous** » Wed Oct 02, 2024 9:33 pm

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

It is difficult to see how unified cosmic purpose can be so dispersed, and so granulated.

What’s more, our personal purposes come and go: no individual purposes are sustained from the first howl to the final gasp. There are also conflicts, both within conscious subjects aware of their competing inner priorities, and between conscious subjects, whose endeavour to flourish may place them at odds with each other, such that my success is your failure, or vice versa.

The part I root by and large in dasein.

Conflicting goods awash in contingency, chance and change. Not to mention ever evolving historical and cultural and uniquely personal experiences and interactions.

And if we look to construct an overall purpose from the sum of the different meanings that occupy our lives at different times, we are reminded that it is only when those lives are complete – and hence about to be cancelled – that they add up to a totality.

Death and oblivion. The ultimate "totality"? In that it goes on and on and on and on for, they say, all of eternity. And it's not like when I do get back to star stuff, I can think, "well, here I go again!"

The consoling thought that our individual lives can be judged as contributing to a bigger picture of human (and transhuman) progress towards a better world seems very vulnerable.

That, perhaps, is what makes today's world appear especially problematic. More and more it seems less and less are able to fall back on God and religion. The world, instead, is now increasingly awash with Putins and Xis and Trumps and Netanyahus and Khameneis. Not to mention the amoral global capitalists for whom everything basically revolves around "show me the money".

Given the gathering clouds of irreversible climate change, and the reawakening threat of nuclear Armageddon, our unending progress seems far from guaranteed.

In fact, there are increasing fears that WWIII is right around the corner. As for progress, who's rendition of that?

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