The Meaning of Life

There's no clearly defined purpose. It's up to us to find a reason to live, otherwise there's no point in getting up in the morning. There's no right or wrong.
apendrawpew

Well. THAT IS MY PROBLEM.......


The meaning of life is exactly the imaginary component of the individual mind as it exists in the now.
wesmorris

best one ive heard so far

 

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unfortunetly for you I'm going to have to say "Duh! It's obvious!". Again as i said before, the common misunderstanding people hold humans higher than all other animals because of the belief that we are smarter than they are. They think, we are just mere mammals we are SUPER INTELLIGENT, which must mean we have a higher purpose than any common house hold pet. You have also taken this assumption. You believe, Oh, we are humans, we cannot compare ourselves to such lowly organisms. You tink we need to have some kind of scale, some kind of system to determine if we truly are smarter than animals, but we don't. What makes a dolphin smarter than a spider? It's ability to learn, percieve and (what some believe) its ability to reason. This kind of abilities and more determine the intelligence of an animal. You cannot say that we are stupider than any other animal because we are animals as well right?

 

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I think most of us can agree that you're not as intelligent as other animals.

 

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I guess to live it as best as you can, learn on your mistakes , learn why have you done them and not let them happen again (to change yourself if you have to and that's not easy thing to do). And one more thing, I think we should all be as happy as we can be, even when we are mad on someone or because of something, we should really try not to be, as there's no point at the end

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I guess the love is what can give and gives meaning to all life. Theres one thing that takes a wize man to understand

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Well even if you can't see now where I'm going, you will sooner or latter. Think about it, we all should

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There is no meaning of life,....

Life just is,...a fact

Life hasn't got a function in particular to your proposition

Your proposition is that there should be a meaning to life:

Define "meaning"

Define "life"

if: (Life=meaning) then: (meaning=life)
if: (life or meaning) then: (meaning is not equal to life) and (life is not equal to meaning)

therefore: when life does indeed have meaning it is life itself wich is meaningfull.


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HERE HERE!!

 

Okay. Where does that debunk what I said apendrapew?

 

i interpret purpose thus: a fork has a purpose. it is meant to move food matter from a plate to a palate - yet a fork can do other things [like puncture your water mattress for instance]. the purpose is not assigned by the fork, but by the creator of the fork. therefore, purpose implies creation, and creation implies creator. hence am i compelled not only to dismiss the thought of life purpose, but to deny it vehemently.

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I must agree with antifreeze

 

A fork can't decide that being a fork is stupid.

 

Antifreeze...when does the fork start living then?

 

1. a fork can't think. 2. a fork is not alive.

don't misconstrue what i am say. the fork has a purpose behind it. purpose given to it by its creator. that is why it was used. now, so far as purpose in humans is concerned, for humans to have purpose would seem to imply the existence of god. we are discussing purpose to life, no? :bugeye:

 

Of course we are discussing the meaning of life but it doesn't necessarily mean this supports the existence of god. When we look for the purpose of life we are looking for the common goal that all living things strive for. The reason why people continue to live rather than keeling over and dying. This subconcious drive cannot be found within a fork since we are, in no way, comparable to a inanimate object.

 

I don't think I am. I don't mean to anyway.

Does it? Who put it there....

What if I didn't create it and came upon it? Can I not assign it a new purpose? (I realize you covered this, but you semantificated in a different manner, so I'm laying my smack down on it to see whassup) Is the old purpose relevant? What if it's creator is dead? Does its purpose as assigne

But like you said, what if I use it for a dart or jewelry?

Rather than "other uses" I think the "purpose" is dynamic.

No, just physics. For instance, in a sense our purpose is to reproduce. I believe there is a good, physics based reason for that, but it's a killer to explain (talking like a book's worth of shit). I think your purpose is however you decide to use yourself at the time. Right now my purpose is to finish this damned message and watch southpark.

Whose life? There are two answers I guess:

general - reproduce / survive
specific - whatever you think it is. in this sense, you think it and it is true regardless of how ridiculous it is. you may think 'my purpose is to kill everyone on earth'. you probably won't get it done and would likely die in the process, but it would still be your purpose until conditions external to you stopped you from thinking it, or stopped you from thinking .... period.

 

1. purpose to general life

2. doesn't matter who assigns the fork purpose, so long as the fork does not assign itself purpose *edit: well, i guess there are exceptions, nevermind*

3. just because we tend to do something, does that make it our purpose? for example, i am now eating olives, is that my purpose? i guess it depends on how one interprets the term.

and i am interested in this physics explanation, maybe send me a link or name of book?

 

What if, I could give the fork consciousness and the ability to think. Does it become comparable?

 

Wesmorris, subjectively, we can all have a purpose; objectively, we have none.

 

The meaning of life is whatever meaning we give it.

Only little children and trained rats need a preset meaning they can follow.

 

In this case, I think purpose = instinct. (obvious reasons to think that?)

Why can't something assign it's own purpose? Did I read that wrong?

If the fork exhibits will, how can something external to it assign it purpose outside of instinct. Unless you are arguing "no free will"? If it is conscious and has will, how does it not define its own purpose by that very fact? Hmm.

Kind of? Hehe. I'd say what you "do" is "perform your function" in the most literal and mechinistic sense, as applied even into the abstract aspect of the mind. Your function doesn't necessarily align with your purpose (due to your brain, experiences, stimulous, nervous system body... etc). I'm tempted to hypothesize that this misalignment is exactly mental stress in terms of "strain on your focus in the moment".

....

Yeah I think you're right aboot that.

Heh, my "physics explanation" is informal at best, probably sounds insane, on and on. It's all posted here at sciforums really, I just haven't been motivated enough to organize it all. It's purely hypothetical as well, based on the little I understand about physics/string theory stuff. I dunno, if you want I can give you a list of threads I think cover all the different aspects of it that lead to the idea that the "survivil instinct" is a property of the relationship between the 3D energy stuff and it's interaction through 'time' (which is that which "threads together" all the dimensions (and from the perspective of the 3rd we see that "thread" as "time")) with the 4th spacial dimension: imaginary time (or whatever you want to call it). I believe the imagnary component of mind (the conceptual inter-relationships of one's mind) is actually the brain's utilization (by nature) of that dimension.

Hrmph. So hey there is an abstract.

 

The real pupose of life I suppose is to ensure that an adequate supply of copies of our genes are passed on before we die. That is what everything in our body is designed to do and that is what ensures the survival of our genes. We are just a carrier for our genes and nothing more.