fuck wikipedia

Some how I got to a page about the meaning of life.... And I can't really tell how

anyways, back OT

on the meaning of life page I found several intersting things and wondered everyone's thoughts on several topics

mainly on the philosophy section and the section on how the mind works.

PHILOSOPHY

Under philosophy I've always known I fell under the stoicism section. I believe the perfect form of human excellence falls under being able to make clear-headed logical decision on what is best for your life. My idea fuses a little platonism (something I didn't know before) because to me in order to make those decisions you need to be in constant search for knowledge, at least knowledge that is relevant to each situation you may need make.

WORKINGS OF THE MIND - FREE WILL

Up until now I didn't know what my thoughts on the process of the human mind would be called. I now know it is Determinism
I believe free will does not really exist and all thoughts of someone is base on previous experience and the build of the persons physical body/brain.

my biggest question is what you guys think about these two section, based off of looking at all the sections under these two areas in this wiki article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life

and here is the sections:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life#Philosophical_perspectives

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life#Scientific_questions_about_the_mind

In all seriousness, there is no "meaning of life".

The existence of this Planet, just a coincidence, in such a big universe, some planet mus EVENTUALLY have the conditions for some random cells to evolve to apes which then became human.

The existence of you... or me... or anyone else for that matter, a possibility in 1 to a few billion that your parents actually meet so you get that special genetic cocktail that makes you "you".

It's just a big, big math equation. It was bound to happen, somewhere, sometime. It happened to us, and on those trillion other planets out there, there might aswell be some alien race, that looks just like us, with some guy called lostclimate that writes in a "3D Game Studio Forum" about the meaning of life with a certain michael schwarz answering him.

All just coincidence. No divine plan, no ultimate meaning. And if you really, really need one: 42.

haha, yes I agree with that. I don't really think there is a rhyme or reason to why we are here, and the only real to think about is what we should do with the random life we have to make it best for us. That's why I really disregaurded the "reason we are here" part and focused basically on two small parts that really deal with ways to get the most out of the life we have.

i agree. there is no meaning in life. if you need one, search on google. they have lots of those...

closed :p

I tend to disagree. The meaning of our human lives and also life in general certainly tends to be all about a certain kind of collective progress. Be it social, technical, evolutional and in all the many other ways within the context of our universe. Progress seems to be extremely important and almost like something inevitable.

There seems to be a very clear drive forward because of a constant pressure of all kinds of 'natural' selections. To me it's like they say, the journey is more important than the destination, but life as a whole certainly seems to be going somewhere.

I'm convinced this in itself has absolutely nothing to do with divine plans and all that. It makes no sense to assume some being has kick started a chain reaction resulting in where and what we are now. Why should it be a being? Why not mere random chance? Why not simply because of the inevitability of the fact that at some point there has been more than nothing. After all, if it can happen, given enough time it probably will. (It's all hindsight talk anyway, as here we are, alive and kicking, on a planet that has been around for billions of years, within a universe that has been around for a very long time.)

Remember that in our current scientific comprehension of our universe, we can't begin to grasp how something that's supposedly somehow not bound by any rules would be able to create universes. It just doesn't make sense, even if in a million years from now we would laugh about this as it might be something similar to the old fashion the 'earth is flat' kind of theories, there's really no good reason why we should even consider theories in that area.

yes but that list isnt meanings of life, its an internal abstracted meaning that we created for ourselves. If all humanity died today. What impact would that have on universe, and if we were made, what difference would it make and would it matter. It's like george carlin's bit about taking care of the planet. We aren't taking care of the planet. The "planet" doesnt care. and I love what he says about polution... if plastic isn't biodegradable, then then we can look at the planet with a whole new paradigm "earth + plastic"

Now he says it as more of a serious joke, but there is a point. We are not any big thing in the universe and humanity only matters to one group, humans. Other than that we have no real use.

Uhm, no, it has been more an observation of what has been happening all along, being 'progress in a very broad sense' but in the perspective of people looking for 'a meaning of life'.

Why can't progress (of life in the big picture) be the overall meaning of life? Remember that evolution wise, any kind of life loses it's meaning whenever a family tree stops multiplying.



To be honest, I never quite understood that line of thought. It's quite arrogant to look upon humanity as something privileged compared to other life or even non-life. I think 'meaning of life' should and can only be seen as the 'meaning of all life' instead.

When it comes to individual humans, we are like ants.. it really doesn't matter if one gets squashed or not.



I think that's a bit shortsighted as we (all of humanity) evidently do have an influence on all things around us. Whether you consider that influence or impact to be big or not really is only a matter of perspective. We're certainly less than one single grain of sand in comparison to the entire universe, but at the same time we're a lot more than a single grain of sand here compared to a lot of other things on our planet.

As long as humanity exists, we as a species certainly have the potential to have an ever increasing influence on things around us, depending on what the future will bring. We're really only looking at a snapshot of time when it comes to big picture of things. We're trying to grasp things from our perspective here, but it's most likely a whole lot more complicated than that.



I don't see why within a realistic context, we wouldn't have what can be considered a free will.

Even if our actions are a result of our character, biological nature, social rules and expectations and so on, wouldn't that still mean that we are free to go left where others would want to go right or up instead of down? People die because they decide to stop eating, people get rich because they take action in such a fashion that they're able to get rich, some people do nothing and live a very average life. I'd say there's plenty of evidence for free will.

I really believe people can do whatever they want if they set their mind to it and really act accordingly. No matter where you came from or where you want to go to.

People do make mistakes all the time and that certainly can put restrains on literal freedom, but it doesn't quite change free will.

Perhaps it's an illusion, as according to recent scientific research it's believed that we aren't even aware what we're going to decide until after we have decided whatever we are going to do. Meaning chance in our decision making could be the cause of our mistakes. Then again, it could also simply mean we still don't fully know how our brains work and all that. Oh, and then there's a huge majority of humans that aren't quite very intelligent at all.



That's true, but the funny thing is, math equation or not, there's actually no real infallible logic behind this thought.

Remember that the very essence of chance and math is the assumption that anything can happen. This however still doesn't mean tomorrow a purple elephant will fall from the skies revealing to us a revolutionary new way of eating spaghetti, even though in theory it could happen.

A whole lot of things are not inevitable at all, only in hindsight they seem that way. But there's no good reason to assume life was inevitable.

We still haven't figured out the earliest conditions in which life could come into existence, so it's a bit early to truly go into that.

Oh I'm not saying we are privileged. Im saying that we don't really matter. and not much does from a distance.


Im also not saying we have no influence. Im saying our influence doesnt matter. We consider it "better" because it'd better for use, but in reality, in the big scheme of things its just different.

This is a nihilistic way to look at things, yes, but its realistic. There is no mystical thing that says "life" needs to matter. To me we are all basically structures that have the illusion of consciousness because we have a brain and a central nervous system. Does this mean if we create a robot with a complex program that learns through experience, can reproduce itself, and can react to its surrounds that it is considered life?



yes we can do all that, but the way i look at it, all those decisions are not based on some sense of "life/spirit/consciousness" but on subconscious thoughts and experiences and the way our brain is set up to deal with them.

To me it's not realistic at all, it's just shortsighted in that it's overgeneralizing something very relative.

Questions like 'meaning of life' only make sense when you try to look for an answer within our perspective. Within the context of life itself. Hence why I came up with the idea that 'progress' is what gives life a meaning.

We could of course get very philosophical here and argue how the color green in itself doesn't matter and how if we would never have known about blue or other colors would totally discard it as a useless definition or question that doesn't matter, but in comparison to other colors it certainly has a purpose and useful meaning. It's all because we have more knowledge on the subject.

I'm convinced there is a meaning of life, but it simply remains to be seen if it's a meaning we could comprehend (or accept) as it's bigger than we are for sure. It's why I talked about thinking it's arrogant in thinking we are privileged to figure it out. I am not talking about anything nonsensical like divine plans here.



If life itself in form of humanity questions it's own origin and purpose, then there's enough reason to assume asking the question is relevant. Whether or not there is an answer remains to be seen, but saying on beforehand that it can not matter is quite shortsighted especially because we are only able to see a very tiny piece of the gigantic puzzle of all things.



I agree, but what's the difference? We don't have a puppet in our brain that controls our actions for us and even if we would have a puppet in our heads, it would be part of what we are... meaning we are still in control, it just takes a little bit of time for us to realize this.

To be honest, in a biological sense it may look like 'hey we're not really in control', but as it's part of the greater whole of one human being is a bit shortsighted to look upon this as being pre-programmed and having no free will.

After all we usually can't entirely change who we are, character-wise. Even if it largely will dictate our actions, it doesn't limit deviating from that.

Idk, I guess we just disagree.

Back OT:

anybody want to actually post what philosophical system they consider them selve to believe, or what they believe about human consciousness?