The Philosophy Now Forum

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2026 8:19 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2026 7:12 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2026 3:29 pm

You are there when a landslide occurs. You may give it the meaning that it was "horrible".

That's not a "meaning." It's just an emotional reaction.

So first you said that "meaning" meant "ability to feel pain." Now you say it also means "ability to have an emotional reaction"?

No, I said meaning is something a living being adds to the world that non-living beings do not.

Well, Gary...that also describes carbon dioxide, overpopulation, rap music, nuclear war and excrement. In fact, it describes everything living things produce. So it says nothing at all about what "meaning" is.

Just how is this nameless "thing" you call "meaning" get "added to the world"? And how can a creature that appears after the world it's born into already exists, be the source of the "meaning" of something to which it is, itself subject? That makes not a lick of sense.

You need to ponder the subject a little more. All life forms can experience and form meaning, even bacteria. It is an element of the survival tactics of every organism. Life is the only source of meaning in the world. Morality is the self-interest of every organism for its well-being and survival, whether or not it is a formal system or a meaning impulse. Too hot, move away. Just curious, where are you assuming meaning comes from?

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 1:15 am All life forms can experience and form meaning, even bacteria.

Oh, goody. Give us an example of a bacterially-generated "meaning."

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:14 am

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 1:15 am All life forms can experience and form meaning, even bacteria.

Oh, goody. Give us an example of a bacterially-generated "meaning."

Good grief, just ponder the topic a little more.

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:16 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:14 am

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 1:15 am All life forms can experience and form meaning, even bacteria.

Oh, goody. Give us an example of a bacterially-generated "meaning."

Good grief, just ponder the topic a little more.

In other words, you had no idea what you were saying, and can't offer even one example to make your case.

Got it.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:20 am

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:16 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:14 am
Oh, goody. Give us an example of a bacterially-generated "meaning."

Good grief, just ponder the topic a little more.

In other words, you had no idea what you were saying, and can't offer even one example to make your case.

Got it.

You got it, you're SOOOO SMART!!

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:57 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:20 am

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:16 am

Good grief, just ponder the topic a little more.

In other words, you had no idea what you were saying, and can't offer even one example to make your case.

Got it.

You got it, you're SOOOO SMART!!

Yes, I can discover the obvious. Yay for me.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 4:33 am

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:57 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:20 am
In other words, you had no idea what you were saying, and can't offer even one example to make your case.

Got it.

You got it, you're SOOOO SMART!!

Yes, I can discover the obvious. Yay for me.

The fact that a single-cell organism can withdraw from a hostile environment means it experienced something and chose to retreat. All life forms can navigate their environments for their survival and well-being. Vegetation indeed has a slightly different problem, being anchored, as it were, to the soil it fell upon as a seed, but that is why there is such a proliferation of seeds. Then comes their struggle for nutrients and the light. It might help to remember that all life forms have essentially the same innate essence, though different in form.

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 4:55 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 4:33 am

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:57 am

You got it, you're SOOOO SMART!!

Yes, I can discover the obvious. Yay for me.

The fact that a single-cell organism can withdraw from a hostile environment means it experienced something and chose to retreat. All life forms can navigate their environments for their survival and well-being. Vegetation indeed has a slightly different problem, being anchored, as it were, to the soil it fell upon as a seed, but that is why there is such a proliferation of seeds. Then comes their struggle for nutrients and the light. It might help to remember that all life forms have essentially the same innate essence, though different in form.

Where is any of this a matter of "meaning"? What "meaning" does it all have? In fact, what is your definition of "meaning," because from the above, you seem to equate it with something like "impulse" or "survival," or who knows what. Can you clarify?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:10 pm

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 4:55 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 4:33 am
Yes, I can discover the obvious. Yay for me.

The fact that a single-cell organism can withdraw from a hostile environment means it experienced something and chose to retreat. All life forms can navigate their environments for their survival and well-being. Vegetation indeed has a slightly different problem, being anchored, as it were, to the soil it fell upon as a seed, but that is why there is such a proliferation of seeds. Then comes their struggle for nutrients and the light. It might help to remember that all life forms have essentially the same innate essence, though different in form.

Where is any of this a matter of "meaning"? What "meaning" does it all have? In fact, what is your definition of "meaning," because from the above, you seem to equate it with something like "impulse" or "survival," or who knows what. Can you clarify?

As I stated earlier, meaning is a biological process; one only knows a world out there by the way it alters one's biology. Anything you perceive has changed your biology in some way; even a fleeting awareness of something in your environment has changed you in order for you to know of its existence. It is all energy, frequencies, and waves; as you probably know, there is no sound in the real world, nor is there color, but only through the biological interpretations of living things. Your apparent reality is a biological readout of the alterations to your body; what makes those alterations are the energy fields around you. These alterations of the body are the conscious experiences of a biological subject, in our case, humans. These experiences are then given meaning by the conscious subject; hard is only hard relative to the hardness of the conscious subject or compared to other objects that the subject finds softer or harder than the present object of consideration. All meaning is biological experience processed through its understanding. The energies that surround us play on our biology as if we were its instruments, and the melody it plays upon us is one's apparent reality, one's everyday reality. The world in and of itself is utterly meaningless; meaning belongs only to the conscious biological subject; meaning never belongs to the object, even though it seems so to us before our understanding. Experience/meaning allow biological subjects to move through the world in relative safety, without which we would perish, for we would know no world.

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2026 12:07 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:10 pm

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 4:55 am

The fact that a single-cell organism can withdraw from a hostile environment means it experienced something and chose to retreat. All life forms can navigate their environments for their survival and well-being. Vegetation indeed has a slightly different problem, being anchored, as it were, to the soil it fell upon as a seed, but that is why there is such a proliferation of seeds. Then comes their struggle for nutrients and the light. It might help to remember that all life forms have essentially the same innate essence, though different in form.

Where is any of this a matter of "meaning"? What "meaning" does it all have? In fact, what is your definition of "meaning," because from the above, you seem to equate it with something like "impulse" or "survival," or who knows what. Can you clarify?

As I stated earlier, meaning is a biological process;

What do you mean by "meaning"?

All meaning is biological experience processed through its understanding.

Then what "understanding" do bacteria have, and how do you know they have it?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2026 12:32 am

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2026 12:07 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:10 pm
Where is any of this a matter of "meaning"? What "meaning" does it all have? In fact, what is your definition of "meaning," because from the above, you seem to equate it with something like "impulse" or "survival," or who knows what. Can you clarify?

As I stated earlier, meaning is a biological process;

What do you mean by "meaning"?

All meaning is biological experience processed through its understanding.

Then what "understanding" do bacteria have, and how do you know they have it?

Would you agree that all organisms have senses? If so, senses give the organism experience, and they govern its choices and movements through its world, whatever that might be. Over half the species on the planet are parasites living within or on the bodies of other organisms; God works in mysterious ways! You do understand experiences; you have them yourself. If you have a bad experience, you withdraw; if good, you embrace it. Experiences tend to be life-supporting, life-negating, or neutral, meaning they do not affect you one way or another. This is a process of creating meaning for future use. You haven't spent much time, if any, pondering what I wrote above, so it's little wonder you do not understand yet. Just read it and give it a bit of time. Instantaneous understanding isn't available to any of us.

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2026 1:00 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2026 12:32 am

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2026 12:07 am
As I stated earlier, meaning is a biological process;

What do you mean by "meaning"?

All meaning is biological experience processed through its understanding.

Then what "understanding" do bacteria have, and how do you know they have it?

Would you agree that all organisms have senses? If so, senses give the organism experience, and they govern its choices and movements through its world, whatever that might be.

What has any of that got to do with meaning? It looks like you've reduced the concept so far down that it means no more than "response to stimuli." That's not an adequate definition, obviously: an organism can have sensations or experiences, and have absolutely no understanding of anything they might mean, even if it reacts.

To have meaning, an event has have signification. That is, it must point to or indicatesomething beyond itself, some pattern of events that has purpose, intention or direction, something that provides a context of significance. Otherwise, it's just a sensation with no particular meaning to the entity that experiences it. It's not "meaningful."

Think of it this way. If you tell me a story, it's just a narrative. If I ask you for the "meaning," you have to go beyond the mere phenomena of the narrative, and speak about how it contributes to a pattern of signification about life. Likewise, that an organism feels things does not imply it is understanding it in any way, or that it signifies something relevant to the pattern of purpose of that organism's life.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2026 1:10 am
Think of it this way. If you tell me a story, it's just a narrative. If I ask you for the "meaning," you have to go beyond the mere phenomena of the narrative, and speak about how it contributes to a pattern of signification about life. Likewise, that an organism feels things does not imply it is understanding it in any way, or that it signifies something relevant to the pattern of purpose of that organism's life.

IF the story has meaning, and if you need to ask "what is the meaning?", then you have not comprehended the story.

That the organism feels something has nothing to do with the organism understanding it in any way. But IF the organism feels something, then that feeling is relevant to that organism's life. Else the ability to feel that something would not have evolved.

Oh, but you don't believe in evolution (and its implications)

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sun Oct 18, 2026 3:19 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2026 1:10 am
Think of it this way. If you tell me a story, it's just a narrative. If I ask you for the "meaning," you have to go beyond the mere phenomena of the narrative, and speak about how it contributes to a pattern of signification about life. Likewise, that an organism feels things does not imply it is understanding it in any way, or that it signifies something relevant to the pattern of purpose of that organism's life.

IF the story has meaning, and if you need to ask "what is the meaning?", then you have not comprehended the story.

Not all life forms can even ask the question. In fact, there's only one we know of that can.

That fact, in itself, is remarkable. And as philosophers, we would do well to pause and ask, what does that fact mean?

And if Evolutionism were true, then the "story" wouldn't have any "meaning." One cannot ask about the "meaning" of genuinely random, chance events.