Meaning of Life Blog

Some Notes on Spinoza

2011-06-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

Taken from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The world must, in some sense, be a part of "god," although god is not conceived in a traditional, monotheistic way (old man with beard): "“those who feign a God, like man, consisting of a body and a mind, and subject to passions. But how far they wander from the true knowledge of God, is sufficiently established by what has already been demonstrated.”

"This proof that God—an infinite, necessary and uncaused, indivisible being—is the only substance of the universe proceeds in three simple steps. First, establish that no two substances can share an attribute or essence (Ip5). Then, prove that there is a substance with infinite attributes (i.e., God) (Ip11). It follows, in conclusion, that the existence of that infinite substance precludes the existence of any other substance. For if there were to be a second substance, it would have to have some attribute or essence. But since God has all possible attributes, then the attribute to be possessed by this second substance would be one of the attributes already possessed by God. But it has already been established that no two substances can have the same attribute. Therefore, there can be, besides God, no such second substance."

We see "things" in nature as serving ends, often our ends. But Spinoza says this is an anthropomorphizing fiction:

"Spinoza's fundamental insight in Book One is that Nature is an indivisible, uncaused, substantial whole—in fact, it is the only substantial whole. Outside of Nature, there is nothing, and everything that exists is a part of Nature and is brought into being by Nature with a deterministic necessity. This unified, unique, productive, necessary being just is what is meant by ‘God’. Because of the necessity inherent in Nature, there is no teleology in the universe. Nature does not act for any ends, and things do not exist for any set purposes. There are no “final causes” (to use the common Aristotelian phrase). God does not “do” things for the sake of anything else. The order of things just follows from God's essences with an inviolable determinism. All talk of God's purposes, intentions, goals, preferences or aims is just an anthropomorphizing fiction."

Spinoza does not worship nature, but rather promotes rational knowledge as a way to gain an intellectual acceptance of things, and all things being necessary, it is the task of man to learn to tame the passions.

"We do not have an absolute power to adapt things outside us to our use. Nevertheless, we shall bear calmly those things that happen to us contrary to what the principle of our advantage demands, if we are conscious that we have done our duty, that the power we have could not have extended itself to the point where we could have avoided those things, and that we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow. If we understand this clearly and distinctly, that part of us which is defined by understanding, i.e., the better part of us, will be entirely satisfied with this, and will strive to persevere in that satisfaction. For insofar as we understand, we can want nothing except what is necessary, nor absolutely be satisfied with anything except what is true."

Some notes on Parmenides

2011-06-14T19:05:00.000-07:00

Haraclitus and Parmenides are often seen as opposites, Heraclitus proposing everything is constantly changing, and Parmenides saying that change is impossible.

Heraclitus - all is in flux.

"You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you."
"To god all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right." "Nothing ever is, everything is becoming."

Parmenides - nothing changes.

"Though canst not know what is not - that is impossible - nor utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be."
"How, then, can what is be going to be in the future? Or how could it come into being? If it came into being, it is not; nor is it if it is going to be in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of."
"The thing that can be thought and that for the sake of which the thought exists is the same; for you cannot find thought without something that is, as to which it is uttered."

Obviously, things seem to change. Therefore, P. seems to be saying that the world of our senses must be an illusion and not what is actually real. P. is credited as being the first to use logic to make an argument for how the world must be.

"[Parmenides] argues with devastating precision that once one has said that something is, one is debarred from saying that it was or will be, of attributing to it an origin or a dissolution in time, or any alteration or motion whatsoever. But this was just what the Milesians had done. They supposed that the world had not always existed in its present cosmic state. They derived it from one substance, which they asserted to have changed or moved in various ways—becoming hotter or colder, drier or wetter, rarer or denser—in order to produce the present world-order."(from Guthrie 1965, 15-16)

Before Parmenides, the idea existed that there was some sort of thing out of which the universe as we know it evolved out of. Anaximander called this "the Boundless," a thing within which opposites existed in a latent form before being unleashed into, our out of, the universe. It becomes complicated to know what is meant by this - is it a physical thing, is it a conceptual thing, etc. Parmenides, nonetheless, denies that such a thing could have existed out of which varying opposites came to be, for what is is, and there was never a time in which it could not have existed or been different.

P. recognizes the apparent contradictions between logic and sense experience, and sides with logic, saying the senses must be in error. Reality should be judged by reason. This is “all that can be said about what truly exists,” and reality is thus revealed as “something utterly different from the world in which each one of us supposes himself to live,” a world which is nothing but a “deceitful show” (Guthrie 1965, 51). However, P. still laid out an extensive cosmogeny, which begs the question, if the world of physical appearances isn't real, why bother?

Notes on Hegel: A VeryShort Introduction

2011-06-09T05:39:00.000-07:00

The following are notes I took while reading Hegel: A Very Short Introduction.

Kant - we know the world through a framework of space and time which does not exist outside of ourselves. We never know the “thing-in-itself.” Hegel does not believe there is a thing-in-itself. Anything that is can be known by the mind. In fact, mind, or spirit, is all that truly exists.

For Hegel, history is not a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing - history means something and is the development of the consciousness of freedom.

“In the face of the demands of the state for outward conformity, freedom can only be found by retreating into oneself, by taking refuge in a philosophy such as Stoicism or Skepticism. The details of these philosophies is not important; what is important is their common tendency to pooh-pooh everything that the real world has to offer - riches, political power, worldly glory - and to substitute an ideal of living which makes the adherent absolutely indifferent to anything the outside world can do.”

Isaiah Berlin - negative freedom - the ability to do what one please. Hegel questions where we get these desires, this will to do things. We may be free in that we can act on our desires, but if we do not control our desires, are we free?

Economics
Liberal Economists - an economic system is good to the extent that it allows people to satisfy their preferences

Radical Economists - must analyze people's preferences to understand how they got them and try to develop preferences that truly benefit man and his potential

Hegel - “The need for greater comfort does not exactly arise within you directly; it is suggested to you by those who hope to make a profit from its creation.”

History is the development of the mind, and what happens happens necessarily.

Modern western idea of mind - Descartes - I think therefore I exist - I can doubt everything about the external world, but I can’t doubt there is an I that doubts - created distinction between mind and world.

Hegel’s phenomenology of mind/spirit - study of how the mind appears to itself, for when we seek to study the mind, we are still studying appearances. “The aim of philosophy is the actual knowledge of what truly is.” If knowledge is an instrument through which we connect with the world, does the instrument alter the object or how we can experience or use it? Knowledge appears to be a medium through which we observe “reality.” One possible way out of this problem is to discover the distortion effect of the instrument (knowledge) and subtract the difference, for instance, looking at a stick through water, knowing the law of refraction; however this cannot be done with knowing the world. Kant said that we must know the instrument before knowing the world, but Hegel says this is like trying to learn to swim while standing in dry land before going into the ocean.

Family vs. Universe, the Good Old Days, etc.

2011-05-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I saw Midnight in Paris, a delightful new film by Woody Allen. This man, Woody Allen, is no stranger to pondering the meaning of life. Midnight in Paris does exhibit some rumination on death and what all of this means, but it's specific aim is rather specific: it analyzes the very common notion that things were better in a prior age, that society is in decline, and the good-old days are over. As noted in Midnight in Paris, there are people in every generation who feel this way, so if we were to go back to any historical era that we suppose was better, there would be people complaining that their age is vacuous and it was really another bygone era that was better. The basic message of the movie is that this type of thinking is a defense mechanism for people who can't or do not want to cope with the present. Fair enough.

Before the movie, there was a trailer for Tree of Life, a film which I am quite excited about. I do not know the particulars of the movie; however, a very clear idea of the theme of the movie is expressed in the trailer, one which I often ponder: what is the relationship between our mundane, personal lives and the universe at large? What is the relationship between having your heart broken, feeling joy at the birth of a child, etc., and a star billions of light away years exploding, or the universe continuing to contract for all eternity, and energy being distributed throughout such a large space so as to make impossible biological life?

Here is a pertinent quote by Richard Dawkins, the famous biologist and atheist:

"Presumably there is indeed no purpose in the ultimate fate of the cosmos, but do any of us really tie our life's hopes to the ultimate fate of the cosmos anyway? Of course we don't; not if we are sane. Our lives are ruled by all sorts of closer, warmer, human ambitions and perceptions" (Unweaving the Rainbow).

Well, first off, shit, perhaps I'm insane, because I do often feel our lives must have some connection to the ultimate fate of the cosmos, or else our lives have no ultimate importance. Sure, we can enjoy our lives, and we can even feel people are important, but if all of this will someday be gone without any connection with what will happen billions of years from now, then in a very real sense our lives don't mean shit.

The human project, as it has been called, has been an attempt to cover up, deny, avoid, this problem of meaninglessness in a vast, cold, analytic universe. There is quite a lot of writing in psychology about how humans deny not only more personal problems like fear of intimacy, feelings of inadequacy, anger, etc., but how humans deny the larger problem of existential emptiness. Sanity has often been seen as a culturally mediated way of avoiding what's really going on.

Anyhow, you will perhaps remember that in my last post I began discussing Schodinger's Cat. This thought experiment is used as a way to show that thinking about everyday objects and events like a cat locked up in a box, is different than thinking about particles at the subatomic level. In quantum mechanics, particles can exist and not exist at the same time. However, in our normal experience of the world, a cat is either alive or dead - not both. Granted, newer ideas have developed, such as the theory of multiple universes, in which there is a linked version of reality in which a cat locked up in a box can be dead, and in our universe alive. Clearly, though, we are not aware of any other universes. Or is that true? Perhaps meditation or drugs or dream states are windows into other universes. But let us not consider these possibilities now. The point is, it's silly to think of a cat being dead and alive at the same time - quantum mechanics might be useful for looking at a certain type of problem or situation but not another. Likewise, it might be silly to look at the meanings of our lives as being connected to the larger playing out of the cosmos. We should simply focus on what seems to make us happy and that which seems meaningful, and let physicists determine how long the universe will last, and leave the two as separate issues. Admittedly, at least to me, this doesn't seem satisfying: I want my life to have a connection with the universe. I recently read a book review, which discusses a book that claims that wanting life to matter provides an evolutionary benefit. Still, these types of explanations never feel satisfying, because everyone always just boils down to biological survival. But why do genes want to persist? Why?

Schrödinger's Cat

2011-05-20T10:03:00.001-07:00

Quantum mechanics is, by all accounts, weird. I don't know much about it, other than various popular summaries. I do not know the math, which is really what quantum mechanics is. I just know the cute stories and "ideas" that the math points to. Something interesting to think about is what "reality" is made up of. Atoms? Protons and electrons? Quarks? Math is used to describe the relationships between these "things," although one philosophical and physical possibility is that there are no "things," but rather processes.

Schrödinger's Cat is a useful thought experiment because it points out the difference between looking at the world in a quantum mechanic/math way and looking at it in a common sense, "normal" way. According to quantum mechanics, particles are highly odd and can exist and not exist at the same time, or go in separate directions at the same time, depending on various things, such as whether they are being observed. (Note, quantum mechanics brings to the fore the issue of observance and how the act of someone observing something changes what is being observed. This of course raises issues related to the "thing in itself" and if we ever experience things as they are, or rather in a mediated way. This in turn raises issues of perception vs. reality, authenticity and identity).

Not done...to be continued...or not to be continued...or both at the same time

To What End?

2011-05-11T09:39:00.001-07:00

A recent article in the Boston Globe looks at scientists whose field of study is the future and how biology, ecology and cosmic events might play out and how this will impact humans beings. To get right into it, consider this excerpt:

“Our sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, but it’s got 6 billion more before the fuel runs out,” Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, told the audience seated among the busts and weathered books of the institution’s second-story library. “It won’t be humans who witness the sun’s demise: It will be entities as different from us as we are from a bug."

The article explains how an incredibly large percentage of every species that has ever existed on the planet is now extinct. Humans, in terms of time on this planet, have not really been around that long. Given the immense epochs in which species rose to prominence and then eventually faded from the earth, it stands to reason that humans might also suffer this fate.

Many people might retort that human intelligence will allow us to stand the test of time. But are we smart enough to last 6 billion years? When it comes down to it, as much as we have mastered nature, we are still, in most ways, powerless against it.

However, for the sake of argument, let's say humans can last 6 billion years. 6 billion years! It is impossible for a person to truly understand what such a large amount of time means. Will anyone remember you in 100 years? 200 years? 1,000 years? 6 billion?

However, for the sake of argument, let's say even though no one will remember you, in some way you contributed to human development. We can then ask, are we developing in some specific direction, and what is the point of this development? What purpose does it fill? Also, given the size of the universe, how can human development relate to what's happening billions of light years away? Does our development relate to the development of some alien species across the universe? Or, does the entire universe exist merely as a nest for human beings, and all that matters is what happens on Earth, and there are no beings elsewhere? If that's the case, then, as mentioned, it seems doubtful that humans will exist into perpetuity. Which then begs the question, what has any of this mattered?

You Are Your Brain

2011-03-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

This is a lovely video concerning the subject in the previous post, i.e. the relationship between the brain and the mind. This video does a good job of bringing up the issue of the category error. For instance, if you visit Penn State University and walk around and see the library, the residence halls, the academic buildings, the athletic facilities, etc., but then ask "But where is Penn State University?" then you are making a category error. There is no Penn State University apart from all of these things which comprise it.

Thanks to Magnus for passing on this clip. Cheerio.

Does Brain=Mind

2011-03-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

Welcome back.

There doesn't seem to be any doubt that there is some relationship between the brain and the mind. For instance, if you drink alcohol, your mental state changes. If you damage various parts of your brain, various functions can be disturbed. Something is going on between the brain and the mind. Just what is the relationship, though?

In a review V.S. Ramachandran's new book, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human, Colin McGinn sums up the issue quite nicely:

"Does psychology stand to brain anatomy as physiology stands to body anatomy? In the case of the body, physiological functions—walking, breathing, digesting, reproducing, and so on—are closely mapped onto discrete bodily organs, and it would be misguided to study such functions independently of the bodily anatomy that implements them. If you want to understand what walking is, you should take a look at the legs, since walking is what legs do. Is it likewise true that if you want to understand thinking you should look at the parts of the brain responsible for thinking?"

If you want to know how walking works, of course you study the legs. But is it so simple with the mind and the brain? As the title of the review state, "Can the Brain Explain Your Mind?" Here are some issues when it comes to this topic...

- Are the brain and the mind the same thing?
- Are psychological state reducible to brain states?
- If the brain is completely responsible for mental function, then once death occurs and the brain decomposes, it is not possible for there to be any form of afterlife (unless, perhaps, there is a soul).
- If various brain disorders impair human functions to such a great extent, what implications does this have for the meaning of life?

Take Capgras syndrome, which is discussed in the review. In this disorder, individuals will recognize the face of a family member or friend but be convinced the individual is an impostor. Ramachandran theorizes that this occurs because the visual system is in tact; however there is a problem with the nerve connections between the visual processing area of the brain and the area of the brain responsible for emotion. Therefore, the individual recognizes the face but doesn't "feel" the emotional connection that is felt with someone close, and therefore, in an unconscious process, the person (or brain) assumes that the friend cannot be the friend and is therefore some sort of "fraudulent twin."

This is extremely weird, of course. And we may rightly ask what this says about the meaning of life. If someone suffers from this problem, how can he or she have what we would consider a meaningful life? Through various sorts of physical flukes, there are countless people who experience weird mental impairments that damage their ability to have a "normal" life. Is this part of god's plan? Will things will be corrected in some sort of eternal afterlife? Or will the person die, that will be it, and the fact that he or she had some sort of disability - schizophrenia, capgras, mental retardation, etc. - will have just been bad luck in a disinterested universe.

Also, if the brain is so weird and so many odd disturbances occur, can we extrapolate and wonder if everyone is experiencing delusions of which we are not aware? My old friend, Sigmund Freud, talking about religion, once said "no one who shares in a delusion ever recognizes it as such." Perhaps this goes for religion, but why not all of human life?

"The Free Man Thinks of Nothing Less Than Death"

2011-03-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

Hello, friends, and welcome back to yet another Meaning of Life Blog post. Today's subject: death.

When I was younger, not as wise as I am now, I used to think about death quite often. I remember while on a camping trip with some friends during college, as we sat around the campfire, staring into the flames and contemplating the possible oblivion of death. It was not a pleasant contemplation, and to make matters worse I burnt the Smore I was toasting.

Anyhow, as many have pointed out, death raises the potential that life is meaningless, for how could anything matter if we are all destined to pass away and not exist? Any impact we can have on this planet would be temporary, and eventually the human species will likely become extinct and everything will be gone without a trace. In a way, nothing will have mattered if there is no memory of it.

Now, I do admit there are some problems with this way of thinking. First, we don't know for sure that death is the end. There may be some form of afterlife, or perhaps there is such a thing as rebirth. However, let me ask you this: when you look at an animal, let's say a frog, do you have any confidence that the frog will have some sort of afterlife? Or what about an ape? Most likely you do not think these creatures will exist after death. The question, then, is why are humans any different? We are animals, after all. Of course, people will counter by saying something such as, "But wait! We're human! We have minds! We have souls!" To that I would counter, who cares that we have minds? Why does that mean we get to live after death and a horse doesn't? Some would say it's not that we have minds but that we have souls, some sort of non-physical "self," which is generally tied to a religious worldview but not necessarily. To the idea that we have some sort of non-physical, spiritual self, I would say, um, I'm not so sure about that.

Anyway, let's just go with what I was saying and assume death is the end (and in general it's best to just agree with me). Even if it is the end, it is possible that there is some sort of meaning. However, it's difficult to see what it could be and this causes a certain amount of anxiety. Concerning this sense of worry, let's turn to Pema Chodron, a wise Buddhist monk who has this to say...

"We're always trying to deny that it's a natural occurrence that things change, that the sand is slipping through our fingers. Time is passing. It's as natural as the seasons changing and day turning into night. But getting old, getting sick, losing what we love - we don't see those events as natural occurrences. We want to ward off that sense of death, no matter what. Fear of death is the background of the whole thing. It's why we feel restless, why we panic, why there's anxiety. But if we totally experience hopelessness, giving up all hope of alternatives to the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our lives, an honest, direct relationship, one that no longer ignores the reality of impermanence and death."

According to our friend Pema, then, by truly admitting that things are impermanent, by giving up hope that there's an afterlife or some lasting security or even a meaning, we can start to relax and have a more honest experience. I see where she's coming from, but yet that part of me is still there, the part that wants things to matter in some way, even if death is the end. Should I give up the search and learn to accept things as they are without wondering if it means something? If so, then this blog would end, and I know you don't want that, so for your sake's I will press on.

Anyway, I'm tired now. Good night, friends.

This Post Is Better Than the Last But Still Read At Your Own Peril

2011-03-07T10:37:00.000-08:00

If you would like to know if life has a meaning, I encourage you to go to the Harlem Department of Motor Vehicles. Once there, you will quickly realize that life is definitely pointless.

Monday, March 7, 2011, 11:45am. I enter the DMV to find a line so long that when stretched it would wrap around Earth at least 6 times. I wait in said line for god knows how long, only to find that this is the line only to get a number, at which point you need to stand, or, if you’re lucky, find a seat, and wait for your number to be called.

My number is B328.

There is also the A, D and F numbers. When it comes to B, they are currently serving B469. I ask someone who works here how the numbering system works, and I think he says – think because he spoke in some accent I couldn’t detect – that once at 499 the cycle ends and goes back to 0. Does this mean there are 357 people ahead of me?

I have no doubt that once my number is called, which will probably be in about a week, I will then be given another number, at which point I will go into another waiting area, and, after waiting another week or so, will get yet another number, ad infinitum.

A couple of things are coming to mind right now. The first: what the fuck? The second: the DMV is a pretty great metaphor for the absurdity of life. No one really knows what’s going on here, how the system works, which forms we might need to fill out in duplicate or triplicate, if we’ll even get what we came here for, etc. And, after all of this ridiculousness, we probably won’t even realize what we came here for in the first place.

This is the 4th time I’ve been to a DMV in my almost 29 years on this planet. The first was when I was 16 and got my license. The next was 4 years later when I needed to renew my license, and I got my new picture taken with a slight mustache that I had been trying to grow (it is a sad fact that to this day, I still cannot grow a proper mustache). The 3rd time was 5 years ago, after I had been in New York for 2 years and needed to exchange my Pennsylvania license for a New York license. And now, 5 years later, here I am again renewing my New York license.

It is rather amusing to look back on all that has transpired during this time. On the one hand, a lot has happened and I am a different person. On the other hand, nothing has happened and I’m exactly the same. It is ponderous indeed to imagine reviewing my license 5 years hence, 10 years hence, 40 years hence. What will the years have amounted to? Will it have mattered to anyone other than myself and the small number of people who care about me? Will it have been part of a larger purpose?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but I’m sure there’s some line, perhaps the D line, in which you can wait for all eternity for the answer after filling out Form DX235 (version 2).

This Is Not a Very Good Post So Read at Your Own Peril

2011-03-06T10:18:00.000-08:00

Last evening I saw 'The Adjustment Bureau." It was entertaining although quite silly. Despite its silliness, it did raise some interesting questions concerning the meaning of life.

For one, the premise of the movie is that god (referred to as "the chairman") has a plan for the world and is guiding events with the help of the adjustment bureau, who are basically angels who walk around making sure certain things do or do not happen so that things go according to plan.

Now, this is a common idea in theology: god has a plan. The problem, however, is that if god has a plan, how can human beings ever change the course of history? There have been many attempts to solve this problem, but it seems rather difficult for a human being to really be in control of the course of his life if god not only has a plan for world history, but for each particular being within that history. What if you decide you don't like god's plan and want to change things? Is it possible for a human being to interfere with the grand design? How can there be a plan and free will?

This reminds me of a friend of mine named Charlie. Charlie is a dog and I sometimes walk him. The other night I was walking him and he kept wanting to stop and sniff things and do this and that. I, however, was in a rush, so I was pulling him along. He could movie slightly within the constraints of the leash, but he could never really control the direction or stop if I didn't want to let him. Human beings may be no different. We may feel we are in control but are actually being pulled along on a leash and our ultimate direction is not in our control, even though we can move a little bit along the confines of our leash.

Anyway, back to the plan. In the movie the plan is never revealed. That's not so different from what followers of monotheistic religions believe, though. They don't really claim to state what the ultimate plan is, but usually say things like it's beyond our comprehension or the lord works in mysterious ways, etc. Perhaps they would say the ultimate plan is for us to live on the planet for a while and then some go to heaven and some go to hell. But if that is the plan, forgive me for being so impertinent, but it seems like a sucky plan.

Anyway, this has actually been a very sub-par post. Maybe that's because the adjustment bureau, although entertaining, was rather sub-par. Crap begets crap.

That's all. Thanks to everyone, including you, for reading.

Stop, Drop and Roll

2011-03-01T19:05:00.000-08:00

They say that when you catch on fire, you're supposed to stop, drop and roll. Basically, I have no idea why I'm mentioning this, except for the fact that I couldn't think of a title for this post and this was the first thing that came to mind. Anyway, moving on...

A friend of mine, contemporary German critic and philosopher Janina "Hagan-Daz" recently made a point that I think is interesting. She said if we don't or can't know what the meaning of life is, then it has no meaning. For life to have meaning we have to know what it is.

Imagine we all go about our lives, this happens, that happens, we all eventually die, the sun burns out, there is no trace that humans ever existed. Also, for the purpose of this thought experiment, let's assume death is the end of personal existence - there is no afterlife, cycle of rebirth, etc. Let's also just assume that human existence created no ripple effect in any other part of the universe causing any noticeable effects whatsoever anywhere else. In a case like this, is it possible that were was a meaning? This raises some points:

-It seems like for there to be meaning, our lives must make some contribution or have some kind of impact on something that outlives ourselves and even persists forever.
-If we have to know the meaning for there to be one, is this because we then need to know how to act?

Imagine someone named Fred. Let's say Fred believes that the meaning of life is to collect Nike sneakers, and he spends as much time as he can doing so. Then one day he dies and that's the end of Fred. A lot of people would probably think that collecting Nike shoes is not the meaning of life and therefore Fred wasted his time. Some people, however, might say that's what Fred enjoyed, so it's perfectly legitimate to spend one's time doing what he or she enjoys. Indeed, some people that's the meaning of life: doing what you enjoy.

Imagine someone named Susan. Let's say Susan believes the meaning of life is caring for people, and she devotes her life to all sorts of pursuits that help people in need. Now, probably a good many people more would think this is closer to what the meaning of life is or might be, and feel like Susan didn't waste her life.

Now, in both of these cases, the individual dies, and let's assume death is the end. Also, eventually, Fred's Nike sneakers will turn to dust. But also, everyone person that Susan helped will also turn to dust, and someday there may be no trace of the fact that the suffering of a person was lessened. If this is the case, does it really matter if someone collected shoes and someone helped people? Of course, many people - myself included - want to think that Susan was right, that helping other people is important and somehow relates to what all of this is about. Unfortunately, though, it seems we cannot know this for sure.

This returns to Nietzsche's point, mentioned yesterday, about philosophy really being about conduct. Perhaps we think helping those in need is "meaningful" because it's a measure of self-protection. If we are someday in need - and even the most secure and wealthy, somewhere in the back of their minds, know it could be them someday - we want to promote kind behavior in case we someday need it ourselves.

Here are some questions that I am now pondering but am too tired to write about...

-What does it even mean to say "does life have meaning?"
-Is it possible for the universe to have a meaning but not our lives? Does there have to be some grand connection between the meaning of our lives and the meaning of the universe? Let's keep in mind the universe is mind-numbingly large.
-Does our behavior relate to the meaning of life? Does someone who has a million friends and helps a million people have a more meaningful life than someone who lives as a recluse in the woods?
-

Were You Dropped On Your Head as a Child?

2011-02-28T06:52:00.000-08:00

I am often asked this question. The answer, of course, is yes. Repeatedly. But no, in all seriousness, there are only a few documented cases of me being dropped on my head, so really not too bad. Now, you may be asking yourself, why on a blog about the meaning of life would I discuss my prior cranium incidents? I will tell you why!

I am currently reading Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche, who, in addition to having one of the finest mustaches of all time, was also an enjoyable writer who was quite critical of philosophy. Nietzsche does something that I think is important, which is to question philosophers, the people who come up with this "philosophy." I don't mean he questions their philosophy - although he does that, too - but he question them, the individuals, these people out of which this philosophy springs. More from Nietzsche...

"It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir. To explain how a philosopher's most remote metaphysical assertions have actually been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to ask oneself first: what morality does this (does he -) aim at? I accordingly do not believe a 'drive to knowledge' to be the father of philosophy, but that another drive has, here as elsewhere, only employed knowledge (and false knowledge!) as a tool."

We tend to think of the great philosophical systems as arising through the "cold" and "pure" faculties of logic, but what Nietzsche is saying is that all philosophy is anthropological, and not just anthropological, but distinct to the very individual and his or her prejudices and emotional structure. Basically, philosophy is simply a way to vindicate ourselves and get people to act the way we want them to act.

What does this have to do with me being dropped on my head? Basically it was just a cute way for me to emphasize the point that perhaps before we search for the meaning of life, we need to understand the context in which this search is taking place and who is searching for it. It also serves to augment what I mentioned in yesterday's post about science and religion being the two main ways in which man has searched for meaning. Philosophy has often been seen as a third way, a hybrid of the two - it seeks to answer the questions of religion using methods that are more scientific. Nietzsche would say that philosophy is really no different than religion; it's superstition in a different cloak. The same insecurities and drives for order and authority that create religion create philosophy. And saying that philosophy is scientific is rather misleading.

Yet I personally am not satisfied with this. I feel there is something in me that wants to know what is going on here and might even be able to get at it. Nietzsche has something to say about this:

"What really is it in us that wants 'the truth?' - We did indeed pause for a long time before the question of the origin of this will - until finally we came to a complete halt before an even more fundamental question. We asked after the value of this will. Granted we want truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance?"

As mentioned, knowing the truth - or thinking we know it - provides security, comfort, and perhaps more pragmatic functions: every society has to have some measure of "truth" or else chaos ensues. We have to believe in certain standards or else how do we wake up, go to work, plan, in short: survive (think about if we just stopped believing in the need to earn a living, or stopped believing the subway was still running, and think about what would happen if everyone stopped believing these things). But the "truths" needed to survive in this world seem different than this desire to know "truth" about what this world is about.

But again, do keep in mind that I was dropped on my head at least a few times as a kid, so all of this is probably horribly wrong.

SUMMARY OF ISSUES
-Philosophy is perhaps just an autobiography of the philosopher, not some rational system of thought
-Philosophy, just like religion, might simply be a way to feel better about the world and control how other people behave
-We do seem to have the desire for truth, but does this desire have any value and why?
-Are there different kinds of truth - pragmatic truths that allow us to survive in the real world, and spiritual or philosophical truths?

Is There Even a Possibility We Can Know?

2011-02-27T11:43:00.000-08:00

In undertaking an enterprise as vast as figuring out the meaning of life, it might be a good idea to first ask, "is it even possible for us to know?" Clearly there is a divergence of opinion on this matter. Various world religions would claim to know quite clearly. Some proponents of various religious systems might actually stop short of saying we can truly and fully understand what's going on, but they would still probably say we at least have a decent blueprint and a guide on how to act. On the secular side, there are those that say we can in fact understand the universe in a rational way through science. This implies the universe is intelligible and that our brains/minds have the ability to decipher it.

While science may be able to understand various physical processes, it is quite another matter for it to understand the meaning of life. If we understand the genesis of the physical universe, do we then understand the meaning of things? Are these not two different matters? An important distinction, then, is understanding the universe in a physical or mechanistic way, how stars form, how animals evolve, etc., and what any of this actually means. So delightful, the big bang occurred - now what?

Here is a quote spoken by a nice man, Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, that poetically sums up this seeming tension:

"Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within."

So yes, my friend, what is the relationship between this universe and the way it works and the possibility of meaning? Back to the original question, can we even know? I myself tend to sympathize with a view that was quite nicely put by J.B.S. Haldane, an evolutionary biologist, who I imagine spent quite a good deal of time twiddling with his mustache:

"The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

In other words, our minds do NOT have the ability to truly understand what's really going on. If that is the case, then why am I even bothering with this blog? A) I'm bored. B) I often do things that do not make sense. C) Even if we cannot understand everything or the big big picture, we might be able to understand a little bit, even perhaps bits that are important and do, in some meager way, relate to the meaning of the universe. Ah, but now I am back to this pesky problem of if the meaning of the universe is the same thing as the meaning of life. Does the universe care or have anything to do with the pursuits of man? The answer to this question is I don't know.

SUMMARY OF PROBLEMS
-Is there a difference between understanding the universe in a scientific way and understanding it in a philosophical/moral/spiritual way?
-Can the scientific way of understanding the world shed light on morality/spirituality/the meaning of life?
-Do human affairs even have relevance to the physical structure of the cosmos?
-Are we some accident and the universe is just some impersonal set of processes with no meaning?

Introduction

2011-02-27T11:34:00.000-08:00

Hi. My name is Josh. I am 28 and from Pittsburgh, but now I live in New York. I need to be honest and get this off my chest: I think about the meaning of life a lot. Therefore, I have decided to create this blog as an outlet for this pursuit. The hope is that by writing down my thoughts, they will become more real. Or at least I can claim that I've done something productive. But can I really claim that? Clearly I am not going to come up with an answer to the meaning of life, so really this is just wasted time or, at best, a form of entertainment.

But perhaps I will solve the riddle of the meaning of life, in which case, many years from now, when we are all dead and no one remembers that we ever existed, someone might be able to look back on the Age of the Internet and say, "wow, the internet really wasn't all that bad, someone figured out what the meaning of life is through his blog writing!" This individual will then shrug and go back to watching sports or American Idol.