What is the reason for life or living?

HalloweenJack

I've always believed the meaning of life is procreation.

experiMental

either to make yourself a useful contribution to the future survival of this planet or be a complete d*ck and make ither people feel better about themselves

gondorff

Neuro wrote: »

God put us on this earth

Er...

Yeah?

FionnMatthew

CerebralCortex wrote: »

What is the reason for life or living? This question is bugging me but no matter how hard I try I can't seem to find the answer I keep ending up with 'why?' .:( There has to be a reason for us being here. Can anybody please enlighten me?

Let's see if we can sort you out with a few answers.

You ask, "What is the reason for life or living?"

I don't take the question to be crucially ambiguous, but there are plenty of meanings of the word "reason," some of which, I feel, might be making this question difficult to answer for you. It might help to explore the word for a bit.

I'll have a look at different ways to interpret "reason," and see how that changes the question, and how the answer shapes up.

Efficient Cause

One of the ways to interpret the word "reason" as you used it in your question, is as a sort of cause.

You could be seen to be asking: "What is the cause for life, or living?"

You can see this sort of use when someone asks, "What is the reason for the plane crash," normally meaning to inquire as to whether the proximate cause of the incident was driver error or technical failure, or something like that.

Now, the answers to this question are numerous. It really depends what sorts of causes, and how far back you want to go.

It should suffice to tell you that the cause for your living is that you were born, and to follow the causal chain back that way. On the way, this story will go about describing your history so as to almost completely clarify what sort of thing you are, where you are in the world, and so on. If you look for this sort of answer, it can give you a startlingly clear picture of where you come in the universe, and I have found investigations of this sort of much importance.

For instance, it pays to know the history of human culture, and our cultural inheritance, as humans and as Europeans. These sorts of things can give us a profound sense of place, and a profound sense of being a part of something with a grand history.

This isn't the only sort of cause, though. Aristotle gave us a list of four types of "causes," and called this sort of cause, the sort of cause we talk about in the sciences today, the efficient cause.

Material and Efficient Causes

Other sorts of causes he points out are the material and formal causes. The material cause has to do with the sorts of thing you are made from - the matter from which you are shaped. The formal cause has to do with the particular shape that is given to the matter - the thing that makes you different to just a lump of raw carbon atoms.

But look! We've already seen how following the efficient causal chain back along that culminates in your living now can actually flesh out the sorts of details we might see in an account of both the material and formal causes. Your study of evolutionary processes, for instance, will provide a riveting story of how natural processes organise matter in certain sorts of formal arrangement, and how those patterns recur and recur in nature.

In fact, part of the scientific synthesis was to show how a purely efficient-causal account might actually contain all of the information in those other sorts of causal accounts.

So if what you meant by "reason" was "cause," these are the sorts of answers you might have been looking for, and in no sense are these sorts of answers inadequate. A whole assortment of causes offer themselves to your question, if you mean it this way.

Rationality

There's another option, when considering the meaning of "reason," and it is this: In the philosophical tradition, what is often thought to set us apart from animals is our reasoning capability. Aristotle, again, said of man that he is the thinking thing, or rational animal. There are many ways of looking at this. But one of the ways is the following: Wilfrid Sellars often said of humans that we are the animal that consummately plays the game of giving and asking for reasons.

We assume that human behaviour is rational. When others believe things, we can ask for the reason that they believe it. This isn't necessarily a cause, in the same sense as we've seen. Mostly, when a person gives you a reason why they think something, it'll be a set of other facts or events, which contributed to their choosing to believe what they do. This goes for all sorts of human behaviour - actions, beliefs, knowledge. Rationality, reason is the thing that makes our actions intelligible to each other. It systematises our (human) world, and builds motivations and volition out of facts, actualises them for our action upon them.

You hear this use of "reason" when a person talks about needing a very good reason to do something they don't like, or asking another person their reasons for believing a particular thing.

"You have no good reason to believe what you do."

Now, this might not seem like a particularly relevant category of "reasons" for your question, because it seems to have to do with rationality itself.

But look: unless you are religious, it may make no sense to ask the reason (in this sense) human beings exist. It's only rational beings that can have reasons to do one or other thing. These days, it looks increasingly likely that mankind arose, not by virtue of some divine being, but through the cumulative selection of gradually complexifying patterns of matter, in a process that has no reasons for happening. Only an efficient cause.

On the other hand, should there have been a divine creator, which you may well believe, you might ask for what reason he might have created us - what possible, rational motivations might he have had for doing so, and how do these tie in with the greater systematic whole of God's rationality?

One could see this deficit of "reasons" in nature - of rationality - as a reason for the existence of religious belief. As complex behavioural beings, we have evolved a capacity to represent the world in a rational way - as a systematic and connected whole of parts, and communicate by means of a shared rationality. We are slaves to order - we are compelled, since we learn to breathe, to arrange and articulate the world, at its joints. We learn the world by doing so - seeing it under this or that aspect, in this or that model. Human rationality is a home for us, and we become used to asking for the "reasons" for human behaviour. We look for reasons in everything. Looking at the natural world, we feel the lack of reason in it as an emptiness - and seeing its complexity, we perceive a need to discover its reason - the reasons for our existing, and for the world's existence. We therefore posit a grand rational metaphysics - in which the very fundamental structure of reality itself is rational - is intelligible and also fits neatly into a systematic structure. Everything in creation therefore inherits from this grand rationality its reason for being.

But feeling skeptical of the old religions, these days, man is prone to feel the absence of explicit reasons in the natural world all the more keenly. And he stills feels compelled to ask of existence "what is the reason for being, for life, for living." One way to answer this question would be to say that it is a category mistake. Existence isn't the sort of thing you can ask for a reason - a rational reason - for. A causal reason, yes. But not a rational one. There's nothing to be found here.

But you could easily ask what reasons your parents might have had for putting you in the world. And it's possible that these are the sorts of answers you're looking for.

Furthermore, there is no reason why we can't look for reasons to live, not previous to your having been born, but during your life too. Reasons are something you have for doing something. Do you have reasons to live? What do you live for? It seems to me that most of us have aspirations, hopes, dreams, interests and commitments to stories that are larger than ourselves. For instance, as a student of philosophy, I see my life as having a common goal with philosophy. One of my reasons for living is to satisfy my curiosity. Further, I have an interest in seeing what turns history takes during the few years I might have. Again, I see the grand sweep of human history as a huge and important story in the history of the universe, and wish to take my part in this story. Perhaps lastly, I have a pressing wish to live longer than is man's current lot, and have every hope that anti-senescent treatments will be available by the time I am quite a bit older, that might be able to prolong my life by a large multiple.

These, for me, are reasons why I continue to live. They themselves might be questioned, and you might ask me for reasons why I hold these beliefs. This would merely be to explore the structure of my reasons, which is an imperfect roadmap of rationality. What are the stories that are important to you, in this life, and why do you continue to live? If this is the sense in which you meant your question, perhaps these are the sorts of answers you are looking for.

Final Cause

This category is related to another of Aristotle's types of causes: the fourth, and last, the final cause or telos. A final cause is like a reason - in fact there are interpretations in which these are the same thing, but the Aristotelian notion focuses on the notion of projective agency. The final cause of a thing is what it is supposed to do - what it is for - its purpose.

If you were to make a tool, like a spade, in order to dig a hole, digging the hole would be the final cause of the spade. This sort of cause was applied well beyond its means within the pre-scientific tradition. It was customary to ask what the final cause of animals, and of humans was. For instance, this is a large part of Aristotle's "man is the rational animal." For Aristotle, the final cause of man was rationality. These days, we treat this saying as meaning that thinking is something man does, and does exclusively. But the final cause used to be applied to natural objects in this way.

Modern science tells us that living objects, and all of the objects of the natural world, cannot have a final cause, because no intelligence created them for a purpose. The patterns in the universe are, we learn, merely the arrangement of matter by regular causal and probabilistic laws. Life itself, and all of the objects of the universe, are the way they are only because of efficient causation.

You might ask, using "reason" in this way: "what is the reason for this character in the novel?"

Classically, this is the explanation for why religious belief sprang up. Because the patterns in the natural world are so complex, we didn't have an explanation for them. So we applied the same logic to the objects of the natural world as we had learned to apply to human action, and the artifacts of human invention. We asked "what is the purpose of this tree?" and decided that its purpose was to "grow." But no tree could have a purpose if that purpose did not belong to someone who fashioned the tree for that purpose. And so gods were needed - antecedent creator beings, who imparted into the world their purpose, or plan.

Science, however, offers us a parsimonious alternative explanation, and makes this sort of story somewhat unnecessary. And once again, it seems that this is a category mistake - to ask what purpose we have analogous to an implement or tool.

But, again, we can find that we do have final causes - our own ones. We can choose what our life is to be about. Looking around ourselves, we can see that there are certain things we might want to do with out life, more than other things. It transpires, in this way of thinking, that it would actually be reductive, and insulting to think of one's self as a mere "tool" of some higher power, which has been given its final cause prior to its being born. No! The adventure of life is that we get to do that choosing. We get to ascribe final cause to our own lives.

And of course, we have final causes in the more banal parts of our lives. You might ask WHY am I travelling right now, and quickly be able to give the answer "because I'm going to work!"

If these are the sorts of answers you're looking for, I recommend seeing that it is you who is most responsible in deciding what the final cause of your life is to be. In fact, this is likely to be the most significant thing you can do with your life, because it significates your life. You ought not to hang around, waiting for some plan to reveal itself to you, replete with a set of instructions on how to complete the purpose you have been "given" in life. You are the person with whom that responsibility rests, and you have a wonderful opportunity to live a good and fulfilling life - one that, I'm sure, is better priveleged than many other people in this world. So grab the nettle, and make the best you can of it.


Meaning

This brings us to a more perennial meaning of the question you just asked. Certain philosophers, like Robert Brandom, believe that the languages we speak are a map of our rationality. We've seen how reasons can have a specifically rational meaning. For Brandom, the meaning of words themselves are a sort of reason. The structure of rationality itself is the structure of the languages we speak - it allows us to make inferences from one concept to the next, and from one state of affairs to another, etc.

In this way, he links "reasons" to meaning. And in an important sense, you could be taken to be asking "what is the meaning of life, of living?"

If this is your question, it seems to draw on just about all of the ones we've already seen, but there's also something more here, something richer. Meaning, classically is a property of words, but there's another sense in which we talk of the meaning behind a play or a novel. There might be a message in the work that comes to us if we interpret it properly. You could say, if you wanted a circular definition, that meaning is what is meant. This definition is useful because it points to the fact that meaning is a human construct - it is something that humans do - the mean things to each other. The mean things when they say and do things. Words mean something only in virtue of the fact that someone said them, or wrote them, and meant something by them.

This, again, leads us into a category mistake. It makes no sense, unless you are religious, to ask what is meant through life. The question, properly rendered, will need an agent, and will look like this: "What did X mean by my life?"

In the event, which looks increasingly more likely, that there was no "X," who meant something in putting you hear, and had no message to give, this begins to look like a futile and mistaken line of questioning. But again, you might ask what meaning your life can derive from the fact that your parents chose to bring you into the world. This will or can be contributive to the meaning of your life.

Furthermore, it seems, we can take the existentialist stance again (for that is what we've been doing.) Doesn't it look like a more fulfilling stance to take to decide that the meaning of one's own life is something that that person ought to be in control of?

Put it like this: Would you want to be like a fictional construct, the meaning of whose life has already been decided for him? If you were like this, someone else would be meaning something by your life. Sure, the fact that you had that meaning decided for you might be comforting. It might save you having to think. But on the other hand, it might quickly grow tiresome, and you might want to change it.

In fact, often we have an example of exactly this sort of thing - when children clash with their parents (and we've all had that experience!) Your parents, if they are normal, will often have certain ideas (hopefully not to stringent) about what sort of person you are going to be. They might decide that you will be like them, or wish to prevent you from turning out like them. These are common wishes on the part of parents. These wishes manifest in the way the parents treat their children, and the sorts of rules that they subject their children to.

At a certain point, though, we all start to find this situation constricting. We begin to find that the meaning our life has been given by our parents is not the meaning we particularly want. We may differ only slightly from their wishes, or drastically, but either situation is a cause for anxiety. And we often argue with our parents, at this crucial stage.

This is an assertion of the will on the part of the child to make his/her own meaning. To choose the meaning our lives will have.

Now, it seems to me that most of us have had this experience at one time or another. The impulse that causes us to ask, at other times "what is the meaning of my life" or "what are the reasons for life", I believe, comes when we forget our motivating desire to write the story of our own lives. It may be that we find ourselves in this situation because we are not quite ready to make up our own minds about our lives. But many people are known to have these existential crises well into adulthood. This is a pity. All it takes, I believe, is to remember that the meaning of our lives is whatever we choose to give it - working with, of course, the situations we find ourselves in it. It seems to me that we wouldn't have it any other way. Isn't that why we have a commitment to political freedoms - because we dislike the idea that the meanings of our lives might be decided by a king, or a dictator.

And it seems to be that if we look around ourselves, and only remember that we have these desires and plans within our lives, we will see meaning everywhere. We will see it climbing up the walls and dribbling back in an incandescent fountain of significance. We have so many ascriptions of meaning, and so many meaningful stories and events within our lives - goals and objectives - motivating obsessions. We are obsessed with writing the story of our lives. We are engrossed in the task, most of the time. It's only when we have pause, and sit back, that we get stumped. We cast around, looking for someone else to write a chapter. We get writer's block. But this is your book. Only you can write it. And most of the time, you've been doing an okay job of it. You almost write it with your eyes closed. It almost writes itself, and then, when you look back through the pages - meaning is everywhere.

Our very language, too, the very thing that makes reality intelligible for us, makes even the most banal thing meaningful, in that we know all things under the aspect of what they mean to us. We interpret just as we represent. Objects mean things to us in terms of what they do, howe they behave, what the implications of their being there are, etc. Any inference you can make from any part of the world is a meaning that object has. And the language ensouls all of this, and gives it its systematic character. And so all things are meaningful, for man - so long as he is not looking for the meaning that he hasn't given it.

Now, we've come to rather diverse passes in our consideration of your question. But I believe that it's possible that when someone asks a question such as yours, all of these different questions are in some sense implicated, and that it helps to sort them all out, and know which sorts of "reasons" speak to which sorts of needs within our lives. I hope this has been helpful to you.

kelly1

Wow Fionn, that's a post an a half!! More like a thesis than a post. Hats off to your for being able to write what you did.

I used to read philosophy in my younger days and while I found it intellectually stimulating and challenging, I found much of it left me feeling empty. I got the feeling that way too much philosphy has no basis in reality and is merely a construct of the mind, like mental gymnastics.

I can't speak for the OP but I think his question came from the "heart" rather than the head. We've all heard arguments that say life had no meaning or that we must give life meaning. I think many of us find this argument unsatisfactory. I think, at the core of our being, we all crave something greater, more wonderful than ourselves. We all want to be loved with a love that no human can give.

I firmly believe there's a basic instinct in all of us to ask *why* we're here and what is our purpose for being here. I think most of us, when we have time to reflect, realize that we seek something greater than what this world has to offer. To say that life has no objective meaning is, I believe, tragic and closed-minded. We don't just have minds, we have "hearts" (souls) too and we need to start listening to that other inner voice.

gondorff

FionnMatthew wrote: »

Let's see if we can sort you out with a few answers.

You ask, "What is the reason for life or living?"

I don't take the question to be crucially ambiguous, but there are plenty of meanings of the word "reason," some of which, I feel, might be making this question difficult to answer for you. It might help to explore the word for a bit.

I'll have a look at different ways to interpret "reason," and see how that changes the question, and how the answer shapes up.

Efficient Cause

One of the ways to interpret the word "reason" as you used it in your question, is as a sort of cause.

You could be seen to be asking: "What is the cause for life, or living?"

You can see this sort of use when someone asks, "What is the reason for the plane crash," normally meaning to inquire as to whether the proximate cause of the incident was driver error or technical failure, or something like that.

Now, the answers to this question are numerous. It really depends what sorts of causes, and how far back you want to go.

It should suffice to tell you that the cause for your living is that you were born, and to follow the causal chain back that way. On the way, this story will go about describing your history so as to almost completely clarify what sort of thing you are, where you are in the world, and so on. If you look for this sort of answer, it can give you a startlingly clear picture of where you come in the universe, and I have found investigations of this sort of much importance.

For instance, it pays to know the history of human culture, and our cultural inheritance, as humans and as Europeans. These sorts of things can give us a profound sense of place, and a profound sense of being a part of something with a grand history.

This isn't the only sort of cause, though. Aristotle gave us a list of four types of "causes," and called this sort of cause, the sort of cause we talk about in the sciences today, the efficient cause.

Material and Efficient Causes

Other sorts of causes he points out are the material and formal causes. The material cause has to do with the sorts of thing you are made from - the matter from which you are shaped. The formal cause has to do with the particular shape that is given to the matter - the thing that makes you different to just a lump of raw carbon atoms.

But look! We've already seen how following the efficient causal chain back along that culminates in your living now can actually flesh out the sorts of details we might see in an account of both the material and formal causes. Your study of evolutionary processes, for instance, will provide a riveting story of how natural processes organise matter in certain sorts of formal arrangement, and how those patterns recur and recur in nature.

In fact, part of the scientific synthesis was to show how a purely efficient-causal account might actually contain all of the information in those other sorts of causal accounts.

So if what you meant by "reason" was "cause," these are the sorts of answers you might have been looking for, and in no sense are these sorts of answers inadequate. A whole assortment of causes offer themselves to your question, if you mean it this way.

Rationality

There's another option, when considering the meaning of "reason," and it is this: In the philosophical tradition, what is often thought to set us apart from animals is our reasoning capability. Aristotle, again, said of man that he is the thinking thing, or rational animal. There are many ways of looking at this. But one of the ways is the following: Wilfrid Sellars often said of humans that we are the animal that consummately plays the game of giving and asking for reasons.

We assume that human behaviour is rational. When others believe things, we can ask for the reason that they believe it. This isn't necessarily a cause, in the same sense as we've seen. Mostly, when a person gives you a reason why they think something, it'll be a set of other facts or events, which contributed to their choosing to believe what they do. This goes for all sorts of human behaviour - actions, beliefs, knowledge. Rationality, reason is the thing that makes our actions intelligible to each other. It systematises our (human) world, and builds motivations and volition out of facts, actualises them for our action upon them.

You hear this use of "reason" when a person talks about needing a very good reason to do something they don't like, or asking another person their reasons for believing a particular thing.

"You have no good reason to believe what you do."

Now, this might not seem like a particularly relevant category of "reasons" for your question, because it seems to have to do with rationality itself.

But look: unless you are religious, it may make no sense to ask the reason (in this sense) human beings exist. It's only rational beings that can have reasons to do one or other thing. These days, it looks increasingly likely that mankind arose, not by virtue of some divine being, but through the cumulative selection of gradually complexifying patterns of matter, in a process that has no reasons for happening. Only an efficient cause.

On the other hand, should there have been a divine creator, which you may well believe, you might ask for what reason he might have created us - what possible, rational motivations might he have had for doing so, and how do these tie in with the greater systematic whole of God's rationality?

One could see this deficit of "reasons" in nature - of rationality - as a reason for the existence of religious belief. As complex behavioural beings, we have evolved a capacity to represent the world in a rational way - as a systematic and connected whole of parts, and communicate by means of a shared rationality. We are slaves to order - we are compelled, since we learn to breathe, to arrange and articulate the world, at its joints. We learn the world by doing so - seeing it under this or that aspect, in this or that model. Human rationality is a home for us, and we become used to asking for the "reasons" for human behaviour. We look for reasons in everything. Looking at the natural world, we feel the lack of reason in it as an emptiness - and seeing its complexity, we perceive a need to discover its reason - the reasons for our existing, and for the world's existence. We therefore posit a grand rational metaphysics - in which the very fundamental structure of reality itself is rational - is intelligible and also fits neatly into a systematic structure. Everything in creation therefore inherits from this grand rationality its reason for being.

But feeling skeptical of the old religions, these days, man is prone to feel the absence of explicit reasons in the natural world all the more keenly. And he stills feels compelled to ask of existence "what is the reason for being, for life, for living." One way to answer this question would be to say that it is a category mistake. Existence isn't the sort of thing you can ask for a reason - a rational reason - for. A causal reason, yes. But not a rational one. There's nothing to be found here.

But you could easily ask what reasons your parents might have had for putting you in the world. And it's possible that these are the sorts of answers you're looking for.

Furthermore, there is no reason why we can't look for reasons to live, not previous to your having been born, but during your life too. Reasons are something you have for doing something. Do you have reasons to live? What do you live for? It seems to me that most of us have aspirations, hopes, dreams, interests and commitments to stories that are larger than ourselves. For instance, as a student of philosophy, I see my life as having a common goal with philosophy. One of my reasons for living is to satisfy my curiosity. Further, I have an interest in seeing what turns history takes during the few years I might have. Again, I see the grand sweep of human history as a huge and important story in the history of the universe, and wish to take my part in this story. Perhaps lastly, I have a pressing wish to live longer than is man's current lot, and have every hope that anti-senescent treatments will be available by the time I am quite a bit older, that might be able to prolong my life by a large multiple.

These, for me, are reasons why I continue to live. They themselves might be questioned, and you might ask me for reasons why I hold these beliefs. This would merely be to explore the structure of my reasons, which is an imperfect roadmap of rationality. What are the stories that are important to you, in this life, and why do you continue to live? If this is the sense in which you meant your question, perhaps these are the sorts of answers you are looking for.

Final Cause

This category is related to another of Aristotle's types of causes: the fourth, and last, the final cause or telos. A final cause is like a reason - in fact there are interpretations in which these are the same thing, but the Aristotelian notion focuses on the notion of projective agency. The final cause of a thing is what it is supposed to do - what it is for - its purpose.

If you were to make a tool, like a spade, in order to dig a hole, digging the hole would be the final cause of the spade. This sort of cause was applied well beyond its means within the pre-scientific tradition. It was customary to ask what the final cause of animals, and of humans was. For instance, this is a large part of Aristotle's "man is the rational animal." For Aristotle, the final cause of man was rationality. These days, we treat this saying as meaning that thinking is something man does, and does exclusively. But the final cause used to be applied to natural objects in this way.

Modern science tells us that living objects, and all of the objects of the natural world, cannot have a final cause, because no intelligence created them for a purpose. The patterns in the universe are, we learn, merely the arrangement of matter by regular causal and probabilistic laws. Life itself, and all of the objects of the universe, are the way they are only because of efficient causation.

You might ask, using "reason" in this way: "what is the reason for this character in the novel?"

Classically, this is the explanation for why religious belief sprang up. Because the patterns in the natural world are so complex, we didn't have an explanation for them. So we applied the same logic to the objects of the natural world as we had learned to apply to human action, and the artifacts of human invention. We asked "what is the purpose of this tree?" and decided that its purpose was to "grow." But no tree could have a purpose if that purpose did not belong to someone who fashioned the tree for that purpose. And so gods were needed - antecedent creator beings, who imparted into the world their purpose, or plan.

Science, however, offers us a parsimonious alternative explanation, and makes this sort of story somewhat unnecessary. And once again, it seems that this is a category mistake - to ask what purpose we have analogous to an implement or tool.

But, again, we can find that we do have final causes - our own ones. We can choose what our life is to be about. Looking around ourselves, we can see that there are certain things we might want to do with out life, more than other things. It transpires, in this way of thinking, that it would actually be reductive, and insulting to think of one's self as a mere "tool" of some higher power, which has been given its final cause prior to its being born. No! The adventure of life is that we get to do that choosing. We get to ascribe final cause to our own lives.

And of course, we have final causes in the more banal parts of our lives. You might ask WHY am I travelling right now, and quickly be able to give the answer "because I'm going to work!"

If these are the sorts of answers you're looking for, I recommend seeing that it is you who is most responsible in deciding what the final cause of your life is to be. In fact, this is likely to be the most significant thing you can do with your life, because it significates your life. You ought not to hang around, waiting for some plan to reveal itself to you, replete with a set of instructions on how to complete the purpose you have been "given" in life. You are the person with whom that responsibility rests, and you have a wonderful opportunity to live a good and fulfilling life - one that, I'm sure, is better priveleged than many other people in this world. So grab the nettle, and make the best you can of it.


Meaning

This brings us to a more perennial meaning of the question you just asked. Certain philosophers, like Robert Brandom, believe that the languages we speak are a map of our rationality. We've seen how reasons can have a specifically rational meaning. For Brandom, the meaning of words themselves are a sort of reason. The structure of rationality itself is the structure of the languages we speak - it allows us to make inferences from one concept to the next, and from one state of affairs to another, etc.

In this way, he links "reasons" to meaning. And in an important sense, you could be taken to be asking "what is the meaning of life, of living?"

If this is your question, it seems to draw on just about all of the ones we've already seen, but there's also something more here, something richer. Meaning, classically is a property of words, but there's another sense in which we talk of the meaning behind a play or a novel. There might be a message in the work that comes to us if we interpret it properly. You could say, if you wanted a circular definition, that meaning is what is meant. This definition is useful because it points to the fact that meaning is a human construct - it is something that humans do - the mean things to each other. The mean things when they say and do things. Words mean something only in virtue of the fact that someone said them, or wrote them, and meant something by them.

This, again, leads us into a category mistake. It makes no sense, unless you are religious, to ask what is meant through life. The question, properly rendered, will need an agent, and will look like this: "What did X mean by my life?"

In the event, which looks increasingly more likely, that there was no "X," who meant something in putting you hear, and had no message to give, this begins to look like a futile and mistaken line of questioning. But again, you might ask what meaning your life can derive from the fact that your parents chose to bring you into the world. This will or can be contributive to the meaning of your life.

Furthermore, it seems, we can take the existentialist stance again (for that is what we've been doing.) Doesn't it look like a more fulfilling stance to take to decide that the meaning of one's own life is something that that person ought to be in control of?

Put it like this: Would you want to be like a fictional construct, the meaning of whose life has already been decided for him? If you were like this, someone else would be meaning something by your life. Sure, the fact that you had that meaning decided for you might be comforting. It might save you having to think. But on the other hand, it might quickly grow tiresome, and you might want to change it.

In fact, often we have an example of exactly this sort of thing - when children clash with their parents (and we've all had that experience!) Your parents, if they are normal, will often have certain ideas (hopefully not to stringent) about what sort of person you are going to be. They might decide that you will be like them, or wish to prevent you from turning out like them. These are common wishes on the part of parents. These wishes manifest in the way the parents treat their children, and the sorts of rules that they subject their children to.

At a certain point, though, we all start to find this situation constricting. We begin to find that the meaning our life has been given by our parents is not the meaning we particularly want. We may differ only slightly from their wishes, or drastically, but either situation is a cause for anxiety. And we often argue with our parents, at this crucial stage.

This is an assertion of the will on the part of the child to make his/her own meaning. To choose the meaning our lives will have.

Now, it seems to me that most of us have had this experience at one time or another. The impulse that causes us to ask, at other times "what is the meaning of my life" or "what are the reasons for life", I believe, comes when we forget our motivating desire to write the story of our own lives. It may be that we find ourselves in this situation because we are not quite ready to make up our own minds about our lives. But many people are known to have these existential crises well into adulthood. This is a pity. All it takes, I believe, is to remember that the meaning of our lives is whatever we choose to give it - working with, of course, the situations we find ourselves in it. It seems to me that we wouldn't have it any other way. Isn't that why we have a commitment to political freedoms - because we dislike the idea that the meanings of our lives might be decided by a king, or a dictator.

And it seems to be that if we look around ourselves, and only remember that we have these desires and plans within our lives, we will see meaning everywhere. We will see it climbing up the walls and dribbling back in an incandescent fountain of significance. We have so many ascriptions of meaning, and so many meaningful stories and events within our lives - goals and objectives - motivating obsessions. We are obsessed with writing the story of our lives. We are engrossed in the task, most of the time. It's only when we have pause, and sit back, that we get stumped. We cast around, looking for someone else to write a chapter. We get writer's block. But this is your book. Only you can write it. And most of the time, you've been doing an okay job of it. You almost write it with your eyes closed. It almost writes itself, and then, when you look back through the pages - meaning is everywhere.

Our very language, too, the very thing that makes reality intelligible for us, makes even the most banal thing meaningful, in that we know all things under the aspect of what they mean to us. We interpret just as we represent. Objects mean things to us in terms of what they do, howe they behave, what the implications of their being there are, etc. Any inference you can make from any part of the world is a meaning that object has. And the language ensouls all of this, and gives it its systematic character. And so all things are meaningful, for man - so long as he is not looking for the meaning that he hasn't given it.

Now, we've come to rather diverse passes in our consideration of your question. But I believe that it's possible that when someone asks a question such as yours, all of these different questions are in some sense implicated, and that it helps to sort them all out, and know which sorts of "reasons" speak to which sorts of needs within our lives. I hope this has been helpful to you.

Are you that fella off eggheads?

FionnMatthew

gondorff wrote: »

Are you that fella off eggheads?

wtf?

No. I'm a guy with an MA in philosophy.

I find it strange that I'm expected to have some excuse for why I posted an extended piece of philosophy on the philosophy forum.

This and that fact that so much of what passes for philosophy on this forum is patently not philosophy, but the oblivious verbal excrescences of mostly ignorant laypeople, and only winds up here after being rejected from other fora. It's a circus of eclectic, non-philosophical meanderings.

So... the question I feel I should be asking you is... "are you that "fella" off Jackass?" or something like that.

But then I feel that this would only be a concession to your tone.

kelly1 wrote: »

Wow Fionn, that's a post an a half!! More like a thesis than a post. Hats off to your for being able to write what you did.

I used to read philosophy in my younger days and while I found it intellectually stimulating and challenging, I found much of it left me feeling empty. I got the feeling that way too much philosphy has no basis in reality and is merely a construct of the mind, like mental gymnastics.

I can't speak for the OP but I think his question came from the "heart" rather than the head. We've all heard arguments that say life had no meaning or that we must give life meaning. I think many of us find this argument unsatisfactory. I think, at the core of our being, we all crave something greater, more wonderful than ourselves. We all want to be loved with a love that no human can give.

I firmly believe there's a basic instinct in all of us to ask *why* we're here and what is our purpose for being here. I think most of us, when we have time to reflect, realize that we seek something greater than what this world has to offer. To say that life has no objective meaning is, I believe, tragic and closed-minded. We don't just have minds, we have "hearts" (souls) too and we need to start listening to that other inner voice.

Thanks, Kelly, for your considered response. I trust you will not be offended if I make some principled disagreement on key points, in the interests of a dialogue?

One thing I will say is that I know what you're talking about when you mention the need for more than empty words. One of the express goals of my post was to lay out the groundwork in detail so that the deeper wisdom could suggest itself through what I said. I lay no claim to this wisdom myself, being entirely derivative of others in this regard.

But I do believe that philosophy is more than just empty academic disputes. I don't think it's just "food for thought" or sustenance for the head, and not for the heart.

It is, for me, neither groundless nor cut off from reality. The classical definition of philosophy is love of wisdom, and I believe that wisdom goes above and beyond mere knowledge, to speak to the situation of every person in their existential situation. Wisdom is the knowledge of the heart. The wise can afford to be truly happy - and the most happy are those who have wisdom - thought they may not have formal learning.

I believe wisdom comes most easily to those who live life, and keep their eyes open.

But study of philosophy is yet another way - the study of those who have attempted to render wisdom, or the path to wisdom, as knowledge to others. Indeed, this can accelerate our approach to wisdom.

So I say this: Don't look on philosophy, nor on what I wrote above, to be an attempt to give the OP his answers. The answers that you see that his heart needs are answers I cannot give him. But I do feel that there is within philosophy a collection of useful roadmaps - a signpost - a way to truth.

I responded to the OP because it seems to me that it expresses a certain discontent with the apparent dearth of answers. This is not uncommon. Many find that how confusing the world is leaves them feeling empty, and cold. You rightly point out that people feel a need to ask this sort of question. Aristotle said of man that "all men by nature desire to know," or, in another translation, "man, as he is, is in quest of the ground." "Philosophy begins in wonder."

You seem to point out that I have not given any substantive answers. But I have given something. And it seems to me the OP was in need of that. The sorts of things I have said are the sorts of things that have set my heart at ease, and have calmed existential anxiety. It isn't the disinterested knowledge that I have given that did that, but the exploration of the philosophical landscape incumbent upon reading through those lessons seriously. It seems to me that the OP laments having neither intellectual nor emotional satisfaction for his anxiety with the ambiguity of life. I surrender my intellectual advice, but therein, I seek to give the more valuable gift of emotional centredness, which arises out of that intellectual substance.


I sense, further, that there is a surreptitious advocacy of a turn to religious belief in your post. This, I feel, is the source of your portrayal of philosophy as a sophistic blind alley, and the advocacy of matters of the heart as the true answer.

I am not utterly opposed to such a turn, but it is not one I could make myself, and being something that is ever present in today's world, it is likely not an option that the OP could have managed to never be exposed to. Hence, and without prejudice, I assumed that the sorts of answers he wanted to be put in touch with, if not openly told about, would be the sorts of answers that don't directly touch on notions like God. I am not a cleric, nor am I religious, and would not presume to instruct in that regard. But I do surrender the advice that I have found most helpful in my life, and the sorts of things that have made it possible for me to live an entirely happier life than the one I used to live, which bears superficial resemblance to the attitudes visible in the OP.

Finally, though, nothing I said is mutually exclusive with a religious world-view. Many theological positions come from exactly the sorts of speculation that I outlined. If you look at the Daoist mysticism of Chinese tradition, or at the Neo-Platonist influence on early-Christianity, you'll see the same sorts of attempt to raise rationality to the level of metaphysics. Jesus is identified, in Greek philosophy, with the Logos. The Word and the Way to the eternal One. The Word was made Flesh. etc.

Actually, though, I want to point out that there is an element of nihilism in what you've said (if I may be so bold). To find oneself dissatisfied with the world around us, and with reflection on it, is to reject the very goodness of the world, and the valuable things in it. It is to hold the world to impossible standards, and to turn away from it in a misplaced disgust. Our coming from the world, and our living in it, is complicity in it, in the endeavour of humankind and of life itself. We are implicated. It's like the doctrine of original sin, naturalised. If you turn away from the world in disgust, you are setting yourself above it. It's a humanistic version of the sin of pride.

Looking for truth elsewhere, you reject the possibility of truth in the world we find ourselves in. The truth in community, in love, in family, in intellect, in learning, in achievement, in charity. These are all worldly possibilities, and they are by no means monopolized by the faithful. Furthermore, it is possible to see them as only becoming truly meaningful in their own right when removed from a context of divine reward and punishment. Existential thought does not necessarily presage a slide into nihilism. I see nihilism in the devaluation of the meaning that presents itself to us in our most banal moments in favour of some mythical, transcendent truth. The immanent truth is as important, and even the faithful ought to recognize, and in most cases do recognize that if God has a truth, then God's truth will be revealed in the most banal parts of His creation.

So I do perceive a deficit in your rejection of matters of the "head" for matters of the "heart." tbh, I don't see the two as either mutually incompatible or entirely separable.

condra

RE "NOTHING"

kelly1 wrote: »

Folks, I really find this kind of reductionistic/nihilistic outlook very sad indeed. According to my Christian faith.....

You find that outlook "very sad indeed"? So what? Do you realise how conceited and patronising that sounds? Should people value your opinions and feelings more than anyone elses Noel?
DadaKopf has every right to answer the question "nothing".
Not only is it a valid opinion, but one that would be relatively widely held.
FWIW, I personally find your "outlook very sad indeed".

OP - like DadaKopf, my opinion is that the answer to the question is "nothing"...

or, at a stretch, procreation. (depending on how the question is defined)

fragile

kelly1 wrote: »

Folks, I really find this kind of reductionistic/nihilistic outlook very sad indeed. According to my Christian faith, it's is God's plan for each of us to mature and grow spiritually through life on earth and finally become united with Him in eternal bliss.

I don't think that believing the meaning of life to be Nothing is reductionistic/nihilistic, quite the opposite I think it frees people to search and interpret life with their own meaning/purpose, as opposed to following some established dogma

It is God's grace that gives us our dignity. Our dignity isn't inherent so I suppose that's why people don't see purpose in life if they don't believe in grace and the Author of grace.

Fair enough, dignity is not inherent, but it is gained through peoples actions and how they choose to treat other people

Our purpose in life is to become like our Creator. But hey, what do I know

The meaning of life is to become like the Christian God? are you serious? a deity that promotes genocide and terrorism (slaughter of the Canannites - Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. - Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered, and their wives ravished.), is bigoted (anti-Gay), intolerant of other religions, authoritarian (follow my rules or suffer the consequences), facist, racist..

You really want to be like that?

I take offense at the fact that you are telling me what the purpose of my life is! it is up to everybody to interpret the meaning of their own life in their own way. If you are comfortable following the beliefs of a specific organised religion and using their rules to give meaning to your life then good for you, I hope it all works out, but why do you feel the need to extend this interpretation to everybody else?

If you really believe in compassion, mercy and forgiveness, it might be time for you to stop looking to Christianity for answers. Of all the sources for you to search in your quest for peace, love and understanding, Christianity and the Bible upon which it is based are among the least likely for you to find it. But hey, what do I know Peace

Zubes

FionnMatthew wrote:

But I do feel that there is within philosophy a collection of useful roadmaps - a signpost - a way to truth.

A roadmap, a signpost, a way? From whence and to whither? To the truth or from the truth? Yes, the roads, the journey (philosophies) hold such beautiful, wonderful truths. We do so love knowing, love loving, yet again -- from whence and to whither? And whom is this "I" walking this path?

FionnMatthew wrote:

Jesus is identified, in Greek philosophy, with the Logos. The Word and the Way to the eternal One.

To see without sight, listen without hearing, think without thought, know without knowing. If the logos is the knowing, then what is the knowing of the knowing but the logos too? The logos (God) is every changing, ever beautiful in its many many forms. But, where or when is the constancy sustaining the logos? Perhaps it is prior to the knowing? Or perhaps after? Or perhaps in between? Or perhaps it is contained? Or perhaps it is being contained? Where? When? How? What? We look for something, yet it is nothing. Yet nothing is the lack of something, which is also something. God is not known through definition, in form or lack of form, in quality or lack of quality, in thought or lack of thought. God is only truly experienced in the return from God (in form/thought) to God, in God, as God. God is everything, anything and nothing. To behold with the eyes of duality is beautiful, but to behold with the eyes of unity.... Who dares see?

FionnMatthew wrote:

To find oneself dissatisfied with the world around us, and with reflection on it, is to reject the very goodness of the world, and the valuable things in it. It is to hold the world to impossible standards, and to turn away from it in a misplaced disgust. Our coming from the world, and our living in it, is complicity in it, in the endeavour of humankind and of life itself. We are implicated. It's like the doctrine of original sin, naturalised. If you turn away from the world in disgust, you are setting yourself above it.

Can we really really know, that another is dissatisified, or rejectful of the world? Is this thought absolutely true? Is this not a really painful thought to believe? Suffering always starts at home and ends at home. The world is ours! True wisdom always comes from within. Self-enquire, look first within. Is it true? Can you know it to be true? Alone as individuals we are not God, we cannot possibly know what is best for another. We cannot even know what is best for us, and it is very painful for us to think we do.

fragile wrote:

If you really believe in compassion, mercy and forgiveness, it might be time for you to stop looking to Christianity for answers. Of all the sources for you to search in your quest for peace, love and understanding, Christianity and the Bible upon which it is based are among the least likely for you to find it.

Yet, through rejection, through discrimination, we move further and further away from this peace, love and understanding that we so wished for others and ourselves. For our brothers and sisters who adhere to christianity, we extend our hands in welcome to them, and walk the path along with them. We come to know God in our own special and unique way, but the God we know is only a temporary focus for the unknowable God i.e. the temporary ladder to the top. God has allowed himself to be known within creation, but only so we can see him without self, without form. "Man may not look upon my face and live". The death of the individual is a welcoming to unity!

fragile

fragile wrote:

If you really believe in compassion, mercy and forgiveness, it might be time for you to stop looking to Christianity for answers. Of all the sources for you to search in your quest for peace, love and understanding, Christianity and the Bible upon which it is based are among the least likely for you to find it.

Zubes wrote: »

Yet, through rejection, through discrimination, we move further and further away from this peace, love and understanding that we so wished for others and ourselves. For our brothers and sisters who adhere to christianity, we extend our hands in welcome to them, and walk the path along with them.

See, that there is discrimination, you extend your hand to brothers and sisters who adhere to Christianity! what about all the other religious groups and non-religious people. Your statement is completely hypocritical!

Zubes

fragile wrote: »

See, that there is discrimination, you extend your hand to brothers and sisters who adhere to Christianity! what about all the other religious groups and non-religious people. Your statement is completely hypocritical!

I invite you to re-read my previous post, keeping in mind the predominate pronoun I have used throughout, and in particular the first few paragraphs, which set the context for my reply. Yes, we extend our hands to those who adhere to christianity, but exclude none in our own walk. Even those who discriminate against the unity, the unity also holds them. We are the same, you in I and I in you, and what a joy it is to bring our brethen closer to our hearts.

Lucas10101

I don't need to be a Philosopher or have some Philosophical qualification for this. It's entirely opinion based.

For me, these is NO reason to life. The purpose of living things is to reproduce and that's it. The Universe was NOT created with us in mind, and therefore automatically results in no reason.

Done.

DANNYMC

The only reason we are here is to breed, so as to keep the human race alive.

ntlbell

DANNYMC wrote: »

The only reason we are here is to breed, so as to keep the human race alive.

The world existed happily before life it will exist happily should all life cease to exist...

So that reason doesn't make much sense.

nothing will _end_ should all life cease to exist so what would be the reason for the universe to exist?

assuming the universe was "created" for life to survive is just bizzare

jaffa20

DANNYMC wrote: »

The only reason we are here is to breed, so as to keep the human race alive.

So why are gay people on this earth or infertile people?

c-note

why are we here??
why not!! it happened, lets get over it and get on with things!

one day we wern't here, and one day we'll all be gone.
in the grand scheme of things the whole entire-ity of human history is really quite a waste of time!!

we have a small signifigance in our solar systme
and practically none in our galaxy

and our whole galaxy and everything in it could disappear and the rest of the universe woulnt notice at all. (imagine all the lights in the world were turned on, and then one in peru was turned off.. would you notice?)

ntlbell

jaffa20 wrote: »

So why are gay people on this earth or infertile people?

things go wrong in the matrix..

nyarlothothep

ntlbell wrote: »

The world existed happily before life it will exist happily should all life cease to exist...

So that reason doesn't make much sense.

nothing will _end_ should all life cease to exist so what would be the reason for the universe to exist?

assuming the universe was "created" for life to survive is just bizzare

Aren't we asking, though why we're here, what our function is, not the meaning to the universe?

However, we are part of the universe, I disagree that we are insignificant in an absolute sense. Quantatively yes, however, the depth of feelings and thoughts that people have experienced throughout history are part of the history of the universe and can never be erased as they achieve permanency in the past. They could resonate through a multitude of quantative data.

Btw I agree with you, I get a bit annoyed by simple reductionism with regards to humans just being here to reproduce. Its a logical enough answer and you can't go far wrong with it but from a philosophical standpoint I think that as a species we represent a new phase of evolution which isn't merely relegated to survival/reproduction. We're still fairly primitive but we have a certain escape velocity with our intelligence.

johnnyskeleton

Has 42 been mentioned yet?

I'm not sure there is a reason for life, and if there is, it is so far beyond the knowing of us mortals that, as much fun as it is to debate the issue, we will never have a certain answer.

Madou

This question always bugs me - what's the meaning of life??...there must be a greater reason for all this??...why are we all here??

This sort of "it is so far beyond the knowing of us mortals" irks me too. What gives people this inflated sense ot importance that there should be a reason for existence? Blades of grass in the meadows of existence - we're of little consequence and will be forgotten forever.

There is no meaning, as species we have a function - reproduction. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. Put a few kids on the planet to keep things ticking over, then it's 27 and the slow decline towards death.

Wouldn't the world be such a nicer place if our brains did not have the power to consider such questions - if all we thought of was food, shelter and mating, nothing else. Like that, we wouldn't these urges to search for truth in religion and war, in genocides and suicide. Sure it wouldn't be perfect, but then our brains wouldn't be able to tell the difference (ironic that depite considerable human intelligence, collectively we still act like dumb animals).

Vonnegut was right about people and their big brains...

A Primal Nut

The meaning of life is that we're being used by genes to copy themselves and help them survive for eternity, or millions of years at least. Its nothing to do with the survival of human beings as a species (as a few people here have said) but the survival of genes within us; hence why we are more likely to help people who we know share more of our genes than others (hence motherly instinct and genocide, to give two completely different examples). The proof of this is ants. Due to the unique genetics of ants, it turns out that a female ants sister is more related to herself than her own offspring - therefore she puts all her effort into helping her sisters (the queens children) survive instead of reproducing herself. Many people think the queen is using her daughters as slaves - in fact its likely its the other way around. This only occurs in species of insects who are more related to their sister than their offspring; there is also one species of mammal where the same situation occurs; proving that survival of genes is more important than the species.

So if we are here to help genes survive for eternity, The question then becomes - what is the meaning of genes? So that the molecules within them can be perfectly stable.

So then why do molecules need to be stable - so the atoms can have or share a stable number of electrons.

So then why do atoms need a stable number of electrons......to avoid postive and negative charges...

So then....so on and so on....quantum mechanics starts here I guess. Its a never ending question really - but it all comes down to the universe constantly seeking stability.

But then, what if for some reason, life could never form - what would be the point of all this matter and energy if nobody could ever see, use or appreciate it. But then again, now that life does exist, does it make the whole thing any more logical?

However, its silly to say the meaning of life is beyond our understanding, as if there is some massive complicated reason - you could argue the meaning of matter and energy is complicated but not life.

A Primal Nut

jaffa20 wrote: »

So why are gay people on this earth or infertile people?

Probably because gayness wasn't accepted till recently, so even gay people were forced to have straight relationships and kids, hence gayness survived.

Or thats what I used to think - apparently, however, the gene that causes gayness in men causes women to have more kids (its something to do with more of a certain chemical being produced which has different effects in men than women) which may be another reason why it still thrives.

Infertility is a medical condition, like something that causes death. The reason we are here is to spread our genes, it doesn't mean everyone is able to or successful at it.

However, human beings are different to most other animals in that we have developed genes for culture, which has taken on a life of its own - usually good for us,maybe not so good for our genes (condoms being the most obvious example, although you could argue being able to control family planning leaves us better prepared to have kids and means whatever kids we do have, have a better chance of surviving). So therefore, most culture is still motivated by improving the chances of a genes' survival, although whether or not it has that effect depends on the limitations of intelligence.

Spiritus Mundi# wrote: »

1 question though - we use so little of our potential brain power, does anyone think a definitive concept or an answer is ever achievable using 100% of the human brain?

This really annoys me when people say this.

We certainly do use 100% of our brain - 10% conscious, 90% subconscious. Why people think subconscious activity is not important is beyond me. It causes us to breath, moves our muscles when our conscious mind simply request to pick up something, allows us to control a complicated a machine like a car, while our conscious mind simply observes the road (or talks on the mobile), translates our thoughts into spoken word instantly, performs complicated differential equations in a split-second when we play football (have you ever tried calculating this stuff with your conscious mind?).

If we used 100% of our brain for purely conscious activities, we wouldn't get very far, so considering the meaning of life would be the least of our worries, not that we'd be able to have any, of course.

Eightball

It is to have a close walk with God. That was the original plan from day one in the Garden of Eden. Everything from there onwards had been to bring us back. People through the ages had achieved different degrees of success from very enlightened to most of the populace now adays who refute His existance altogether.

Shinji Ikari

Eightball wrote: »

It is to have a close walk with God. That was the original plan from day one in the Garden of Eden. Everything from there onwards had been to bring us back. People through the ages had achieved different degrees of success from very enlightened to most of the populace now adays who refute His existance altogether.

Anyway.......

Stones85

The meaning of life?
Imo to find this out we must ask why are we here?
If we ask why we are here, we have to ask how did we get here?
If we ask how did we get here, we must ask what made us and everything else.

At some percise point "time" started and the universe was created/started/began. So before this there was nothing (I presume), is that right? So if there was nothing, then someone(for want of a better word) created/started time and the universe? No?

Everything in existance had a starting point, what started it? What went before?

Is everything in the universe random chance? I find that hard to believe. I'm pretty sure everything coming together totally randomly is mathematically impossible. Even if it's not.... what started it all?

So what started it all?

If we find that out I think it would be easier to find the meaning of life.

gondorff

Eightball wrote: »

It is to have a close walk with God. That was the original plan from day one in the Garden of Eden. Everything from there onwards had been to bring us back. People through the ages had achieved different degrees of success from very enlightened to most of the populace now adays who refute His existance altogether.

Yeah.

And Father Christmas also.

kelly1

Stones85 wrote: »

So people who are infertile(due to old age or anything else) have to reason to live or have no meaning to their lives?

Good point Stones. Several people (most?) have made the point that the purpose of human life is to reproduce. So if someone is incapable of reproducing, does that make their life meaningless? What about people with defective genes? Should they be prevented from having children too? Is an infertile woman or man or the elderly useless?

What about people who choose to be celibate? Are nuns/priests/monks a waste of space? Certainly not in my opinion!

I find this kind of utilitarian attitude to be quite ugly really. It tries to rob people of their human dignity by reducing their purpose in life to "mating". And if you can't pass on your genes, your life has been a waste of time.

Just goes to show what happens when people reject God. We have dignity because we are created in God's image! And to reject this idea is the greatest tragedy. No wonder people behave like animals when they equate themselves with animals. It's not what we're meant to be folks!

EDIT: If the purpose of life is to pass on genes, then the quality of those genes would be paramount. So was Hitler justified in trying to produce an Aryan race? Should people with Downs Syndrome, for example, be sterilized?

ntlbell

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Aren't we asking, though why we're here, what our function is, not the meaning to the universe?

However, we are part of the universe, I disagree that we are insignificant in an absolute sense. Quantatively yes, however, the depth of feelings and thoughts that people have experienced throughout history are part of the history of the universe and can never be erased as they achieve permanency in the past. They could resonate through a multitude of quantative data.

Btw I agree with you, I get a bit annoyed by simple reductionism with regards to humans just being here to reproduce. Its a logical enough answer and you can't go far wrong with it but from a philosophical standpoint I think that as a species we represent a new phase of evolution which isn't merely relegated to survival/reproduction. We're still fairly primitive but we have a certain escape velocity with our intelligence.

I wasn't giving the reason the universe existed.

I was just stating it exists if life exists or not

Dragan

CerebralCortex wrote: »

What is the reason for life or living? This question is bugging me but no matter how hard I try I can't seem to find the answer I keep ending up with 'why?' .:( There has to be a reason for us being here. Can anybody please enlighten me?

There are two different routes you can take with this question OP.

You can

A) have someone else give you a reason.
Find your own.

Sounds like a cop out or a Disney film I know, but it's pretty much true.

I haven't read this thread but I imagine there is a lot of "the meaning of life" stuff floating about, talk of religion, life on other planets, what it all means etc. The simple fact is that the only person who can come up with those answers is you mate. You need to find your own reason for living. For some it's money, for others success in their choosen fields, some people live to help others and some people live only to take from others.

All you can do is decide your own set of rules, your own set of morals and your own definition of happiness and then go about doing what you can to achevie them.