Sentence structure "what is the meaning of life"

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by Lilalena, Oct 1, 2010.

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  1. Lilalena

    Lilalena Registered Senior Member

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    Hope that you can hold off thinking too deeply, because I'm after a very literal reading of the sentence "What is the meaning of life" here. Wonder if you could help me to explain the idea that:

    ===The question "what is the meaning of life" has unprecedented sentence structure, because it uses the word "meaning" outside of the contexts we usually apply it in. ====

    The contexts (I can think of) in which we usually apply the word "meaning" are:

    1) when looking for the symbolism behind a thing, action or group of actions (e.g. What is the meaning of that smile, what is the meaning of this behaviour)

    2) when looking for the consensus on a word's definition. (eg what is the meaning of "ersatz")

    That is, we apply the word "meaning" when we are referring to a thing/action or a group of things/actions. However , in the sentence "what is the meaning of life" we are applying the word "meaning" to something that is

    NOT SO MUCH a single thing/ action nor a single group of things/actions AS

    a " group of groups".

    We are basically asking "What is the meaning of this group of groups". The structure of the sentence is unprecedented. The question is too vague to be considered a valid sentence. Are there any other instances in which we apply the word "meaning" in this way?

    In contrast, the other BIG questions like: does God exist, is there life after death - we can address more systematically maybe in part because - they are clear sentences.
    My goal here is to be able to rephrase the sentence "What is the meaning of life" into a clearer , simpler sentence that is in fact possible to begin to answer (Obviously this project is doomed to failure but any comments from you would be very welcome....)

    Thanks for reading this far!!!!
     
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2010
    Lilalena, Oct 1, 2010
    #1

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  3. wynn

    wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    wynn, Oct 1, 2010
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  5. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    This is a perfect illustration of the fact that the meaning of a sentence is something that our brain processes organically--an analog process. It is not merely an exercise in combining the meanings of the individual words according to a set of rules which, no matter how complex, could be emulated satisfactorily by a digital processor such as a modern computer.

    Signal's reference shows that analyzing the question, "What is the meaning of life?" includes not only determining from context whether the questioner is referring to his own life, the life of everyone in the classroom or other community, all human life, a life extended by a hypothetical afterlife, all organic life, the service life of a product, the term of coherent existence of a planet or other astronomical object, etc. It also includes agreeing on the meaning of the word life.

    Furthermore, both the context and the meaning influence each other. The meaning of the "life" of a diesel engine is considerably different than the "life" of a nation. For the engine, it could mean how many years it can continue to run like new after a series of overhauls, or it could mean how many years it will retain its recognizable form before being melted down for scrap or decomposed by the elements in a dump, or it could refer to the loftiness or humility of its service in powering the electrical grid of ten million residences or the limousine of a despotic dictator. For the nation it could be a time span, but it could also refer to a culture, philosophy, or political position.

    Presuming (as one must always do) that in this case the question refers to individual human beings, there is still a vast cornucopia of choices. And it will be a different cornucopia for each of us, depending on our educational, cultural, political and religious background. Some will say the meaning of life is, "You're born, you interact with the universe for a few decades, and you die." Others will say that it is, "How you conduct yourself during this brief corporeal prelude, and how you are rewarded in the eternal afterlife."

    My personal answer is, "How did your contribution to the maintenance and advancement of civilization correlate with what you took from it?" I regard civilization as a living superorganism that we have spent twelve thousand years creating, and we are its cells. So perhaps to me the more important question would be "what is the meaning of the life of a civilization?"

    Some civilizations have already died. The Inca and Olmec/Maya/Aztec civilizations were killed by a competitor (Mesopotamia/Christendom), while the Egyptian and Harappan civilizations reached a point of decay and stagnancy and were absorbed by younger civilizations (Mesopotamia/Islam and India, respectively). But there is also "civilization" as a planet-wide organism, especially today with the Global Village. What is the meaning of its life?
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Oct 1, 2010
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  7. Lilalena

    Lilalena Registered Senior Member

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    Perfect!

    I haven't read all of the SEP article yet but it's perfect and so is your response, Fraggle rocker. You guys got EXACTLY what I was trying to get at. I wanted a systematic way to approach the question and now I have a lot of material to look at. Will post again as soon as I finish reading, and will pick up on the different ideas you bring up in your post.

    Once again, many thanks!!!!!
     
    Lilalena, Oct 4, 2010
    #4
  8. Mystical Sadhu

    Mystical Sadhu Registered Member

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    Part of the process in asking the question, perceiving it and the answer(s), if any, have to do with a search for greater subtlety and an anchor which encompasses "all life", each and every life. Acknowledging this will participate in finding an intelligence and subtle answer, and lay the foundation for new thesholds even more subtle to be explored -- principles without dogmas.
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2010
    Mystical Sadhu, Oct 4, 2010
    #5
  9. Lilalena

    Lilalena Registered Senior Member

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    meaning for all life?

    i dont think there could be a single 'standard' meaning for a human life
     
    Lilalena, Oct 11, 2010
    #6
  10. M00se1989

    M00se1989 Banned Banned

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    HELLO its called God. You have to live with pure objectives to keep up with his rule of seven in todays society. (Today being day one as it is not yet the week end lol. ) But fortunately or unfortunately there are people in this life you can't avoid. I might be one of them. But you have to see me too-to Understand the fullest message in my words. As do we all in each other? I "suppose"(=
     
    M00se1989, Oct 12, 2010
    #7
  11. Lilalena

    Lilalena Registered Senior Member

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    WITMOL vs WGMTL

    “God is the meaning of human life” is a non-sequitur. So is “Christ died in order to set us free.” If you were brought up Catholic (like me) you become somewhat immune to the barrage of illogic as you grow old, but – not totally. There’s always something inside you asking: How, actually, do these statements make sense?

    The explanation to why Christ died has to do with (if I remember correctly) God wanting to wipe the slate clean the way he did in Noah’s time. The amount of sin in the world equated to a gaping deficit in the divine accounting system that only the suffering of someone sufficiently important as the Son of God could plug up. Actually, why does death HAVE TO BE part of the bail-out package? You can pursue this and related ideas in a hundred logical ways, but ultimately you will be forced to ask, if faith is all we need, why did Theology have to be invented in the first place? Isn’t the very existence of theology a symptom of a failure of faith? Conversely, there’s the Christian habit of invoking faith every time we encounter a failure of logic in Theology. Cheating?

    Luckily, the ideas above are not my concern in this thread. Any God-centered view of meaning is a minefield of pseudo-logic, rationalization and non-sequitur. There’s no point in discussion. Even the SEP gets pretty much nowhere on the topic and its final paragraph on God-centered views of Meaning of Life is punctuated with question marks. I don’t mind people stringing together incredibly vague, omni-directional sentences if they are believers in God and the soul. I guess that just goes with the territory.

    My beef is with naturalists / scientists / logicians trained in the art of precision, who do not believe in God, constructing sloppy sentences like “What is the meaning of life?” Only a slight paraphrase: “What gives meaning to life?” makes the question immediately approachable. Shouldn’t this question replace “What is the meaning of life?” It is not the same question, but people already use them interchangeably – perhaps because it is what they really mean. That is, it's the more precise sentence.

    Fraggle Rocker, your response to “What is the meaning of life?” was:

    You were capable of a concise, clear answer because you were really addressing the question “What gives meaning to life?” – the more precise sentence.

    Could it be that better sentence construction can save us from superfluous philosophizing. (sorry, I’m so shallow)

    Of course I’m assuming you have been using the 2 questions interchangeably. I may be wrong. Would you have different responses to

    1.What is the meaning of life?
    2.What gives meaning to life?

    For the sake of my argument I hope not! ????
     
    Lilalena, Oct 13, 2010
    #8
  12. John99

    John99 Banned Banned

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    Let me ask you this:

    How does this differ from "what is the meaning of tree?" or "what is the meaning of rock?" or "what is the meaning of fish?"

    I am not saying it is wrong to ask and i have read the question before but i admit to not coming to terms with this type of question.
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2010
    John99, Oct 13, 2010
    #9
  13. John99

    John99 Banned Banned

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    Also, you have to remember life means different things depending on the species. For humans life is breathing but not for fish.
     
    John99, Oct 13, 2010
    #10
  14. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Jung teaches us that these are metaphors, so they make sense in the same way that "the early bird gets the worm" or "love is a battlefield" make sense. Although Jung assures us that metaphors such as these are archetypes, motifs which occur in nearly every society in nearly every era because they're instincts preprogrammed into our synapses by the fits and starts of evolution, still one must be a member of the particular society that phrased the metaphor in this particular way, or it won't make sense.

    This reminds us that communication is not an individual activity, it is a social activity. Contrary to Lewis Carroll's pronouncement, words do not ever mean exactly what the person using them wants them to mean. They mean no less and no more than what the particular language community has established as their meaning.

    Usually these days, when someone asks about "the meaning of life," he's not asking for the meaning of the word, and he's also not asking about the meaning of your life, my life, neighbor Zeke's life, or the life of any individual. He's asking about the phenomenon of life itself, almost always human life.

    Yes his question implies that it has an answer, that human life is not meaningless. Most of us generally indulge that implication because, let's face it, most of us feel better believing that life has meaning.
    You came to the right place to exercise that shallowness. We're all word pedants here and we like precision in language.
    Yes, you are wrong and yes, the questions have different answers. I answered the easy one because that's the direction in which the discussion was going, but I did you all a disservice in so doing.

    The other one is much more difficult. As a civilization we can say what should make life meaningful, because if we all more or less agree on that then we can guide civilization in a coherent and, hopefully, positive direction. But "the meaning of life" is very personal and it's unlikely that we more or less agree on that. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to matter that we don't.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Oct 13, 2010
    #11
  15. wynn

    wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    No, because all the people in the world are just one big happy family ...

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    wynn, Oct 13, 2010
    #12
  16. wynn

    wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    These are (potentially) different questions.
    I say potentially, because there may be answers that would make the two questions equal, and there are answers that make them different.

    How you formulate questions about this topic already implies some kind of answer - the question implies a particular framework for the answer.

    Similar questions, based on different premises/frameworks:

    What is the purpose of life?
    What do we live for?
    What makes life worth living?
    What, if you don't do it or don't have, makes your life worthless/meaningless/futile?

    As the SEP article skecthes out, a large part of the "meaning of life" literature goes into analyzing how the terms in this phrase are to be understood.
    For the sake of simplicity and practicality, the topic is often called "the meaning of life", but it should go without saying that any attempt to address it needs to clarify what is meant by the terms.
     
    wynn, Oct 13, 2010
    #13
  17. Jan Ardena

    Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    I think the question is rhetorical.
    "Life" is the reason we can ask such questions, percieve answers, and
    draw conclusions.

    If someone finds their spouse being unfaithful, they may well ask "what is the meaning of this". But that question does not really represent knowledge that is sought.

    jan.
     
    Jan Ardena, Oct 14, 2010
    #14
  18. wynn

    wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    This is the first time that I see this question be classified as "rhetorical"!

    A rhetorical question can be understood in several ways, though - either as a negative assertion ("There is no meaning of life"), an assertion of impossibility ("It is impossible to know what the meaning of life is"), a wish things would be otherwise ("I wish the meaning of life would not be so difficult to figure out"), or as positive assertion ("Of course there is meaning to life").

    So which of the possible rhetorical uses did you have in mind?


    Why not?
     
    wynn, Oct 14, 2010
    #15
  19. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    You're both wrong. A rhetorical question is a question to which the questioner does not expect or even want an answer, because he intends to answer it himself in the next breath.

    A rhetorical device is a technique for guiding the listener or reader into taking a specific perspective on a topic that may not have been the one he started with. If you say, "The meaning of life is...," the listener may interrupt you with, "I know the meaning of life, you pompous egghead." But if you say, "What is the meaning of life?" he's more likely to stop and think, "Well okay, I guess that's a complicated issue worth discussing." Rhetorical devices are perhaps used more often in speech than in writing, since writing is expected to delve deeper into issues than conversation.

    Not only did Ultra not answer his own question, he went to some length to elaborate on it. So it was clearly not of rhetorical nature. He wants to hear our answers.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Oct 14, 2010
    #16
  20. wynn

    wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    But JA was talking about the question in general, not in Ultra's particular use.

    As if uttering "What is the meaning of life?" would be similar to uttering "Do birds fly?"
     
    wynn, Oct 14, 2010
    #17
  21. Jan Ardena

    Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Signal,

    I don't think it starts out that way.

    It falls into all three categories.

    jan.






    Why not?[/QUOTE]
     
    Jan Ardena, Oct 14, 2010
    #18
  22. wynn

    wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    How do you think it does start out?


    I shall guess - because that question is one contained in the mind, but since the self is not enmeshed in the workings of the mind and the senses, it is a useless question as the self constitutionally does not get involved with it to begin with, we just ask it when we identify with the mind and the senses.

    (And I have listed four categories.)
     
    wynn, Oct 14, 2010
    #19
  23. Lilalena

    Lilalena Registered Senior Member

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    Let me put this another way. Do you think that whenever we refer to "meaning of life" we think in terms of "meaning IN life" and can't think any other way? From the responses here I get the impression that it is impossible to think about "meaning of life" without unwittingly switching to another track: "meaning IN life".

    I am considering whether it is only by some error/accident that the phrase evolved to include an "of". If it had reached us in the form using "in", no one would complain or notice any difference, and actually, we would have been lucky if it had because that would come over as a more natural question.

    So do you think "meaning of life" is just the label for a category of questions that have more precise sentence structure?
    Further, do you think people prefer the "of" form to the "in" because it sounds deeper?

    No one has really offered an answer to "meaning of life" except that it is complex, profound. But there are times when complex and profound - is nothing more than vague, and sloppy. And maybe the question "what is the meaning of life" is one of those times.
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2010
    Lilalena, Oct 16, 2010
    #20
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