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Isn't it incoherent to ask about "the meaning/purpose of life"?

Isn't it incoherent to ask about "the meaning/purpose of life"?

Floyd
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Posted 08/20/06 - 11:18 PM: Subject: Isn't it incoherent to ask about "the meaning/purpose of life"?	#1
I always hear people ask questions about meaning and purpose of life, being, or existence itself. Isn't this incoherent? Meaning is the content assigned to a symbol by agents (i.e. conscious beings), usually culturally. Purpose is the reason an agent does something. Thus, the existence of an agent is a prerequisite of meaning and purpose. So, unless we are speaking of the meaning or purpose an agent has to another agent, isn't it incoherent to speak of the meaning or purpose of the agent itself? Isn't it equally incoherent to speak of the meaning or purpose of "existence", "being", or "the universe" itself? I've noticed a similar fallacy when people mistake determinism for a lack of free-will. These people seem to mistake their lack of ability to control who they are themselves with a complete lack of ability to control anything. What they've done, then, is taken freewill, which refers to the relationship of an agent to its environment, and mistaken it for something that refers to the relationship between some objective perceiver and themselves. They are wrong, though; just because they can't control who and what they are originally, doesn't mean that, once they are that person, that they can't control anything. With meaning and purpose, these people again seem to mistake themselves as the object of a subjective function. Again, what they do is take meaning/purpose, which refer to the relationship of an agent to its environment, and mistaken it for something that refers to the relationship between some objective perceiver and themselves. Again they are wrong, they can do things on purpose on create/observe meaning, but such meaning and purpose is a result of their existence, not vice versa. The fallacy in both cases is mistaking a function of a subject relating to objects for some sort of incoherent objective function that applies to everything. Are these fallacies caused simply by people continually thinking about "life" and "existence" as having some ultimate overarching narration? "What's the meaning of life?" is an incoherent question, right? -Floyd
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Andrew Saunders
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Posted 08/21/06 - 02:29 AM:	#2
Floyd wrote: I always hear people ask questions about meaning and purpose of life, being, or existence itself. Isn't this incoherent? Meaning is the content assigned to a symbol by agents (i.e. conscious beings), usually culturally. Purpose is the reason an agent does something. Thus, the existence of an agent is a prerequisite of meaning and purpose. So, unless we are speaking of the meaning or purpose an agent has to another agent, isn't it incoherent to speak of the meaning or purpose of the agent itself? Isn't it equally incoherent to speak of the meaning or purpose of "existence", "being", or "the universe" itself? I've noticed a similar fallacy when people mistake determinism for a lack of free-will. These people seem to mistake their lack of ability to control who they are themselves with a complete lack of ability to control anything. What they've done, then, is taken freewill, which refers to the relationship of an agent to its environment, and mistaken it for something that refers to the relationship between some objective perceiver and themselves. They are wrong, though; just because they can't control who and what they are originally, doesn't mean that, once they are that person, that they can't control anything. With meaning and purpose, these people again seem to mistake themselves as the object of a subjective function. Again, what they do is take meaning/purpose, which refer to the relationship of an agent to its environment, and mistaken it for something that refers to the relationship between some objective perceiver and themselves. Again they are wrong, they can do things on purpose on create/observe meaning, but such meaning and purpose is a result of their existence, not vice versa. The fallacy in both cases is mistaking a function of a subject relating to objects for some sort of incoherent objective function that applies to everything. Are these fallacies caused simply by people continually thinking about "life" and "existence" as having some ultimate overarching narration? "What's the meaning of life?" is an incoherent question, right? -Floyd I agree with your position wrt to free will -you are in favour of compatibilism as I am. However, as an analogy for the meaning of life I am not yet convinced it works (though I am by no means of fixed opinion). First, I should point out that it will not help you prove your point to use free will as an analogy, since you will have a hard enough time of convincing your readers of compatiblism. You will not have that problem with me, but I am not yet sure that an ultimate, objective meaning to existence cannot be found. The mistake made by those denying free will exists is that they define free will in a way which is not meaningful (intuitive perhaps, but meaningless nonetheless.) Their conception of free will (the "ability to do otherwise") does not fit with the important property that we as thinking, feeling, decision makers possess -our will REALLY IS free, but their definition has forced them to deny it. Free will DOES exist from an objective standpoint -it is property possessed by beings in our universe such as ourselves. If we were to step back and look at ourselves from a scientific lense, we could see ourselves as complicated decision making machines -precisely that which possesses what, by any meaningful definition of the word, IS free will. Now in the same way, we might find that there is a "meaning of life" from an objective perspective, to be found within some entities in our universe (presumably those same entities that possess free will.) In a way, this suggests (as I think you are suggesting) that it is only within these certain entities, or from their viewpoint, that a meaning of life exists; outside of the perspective of a certain class of beings, the question is not meaningful. But I think that conclusion might be premature. First of all, in the same way that free will is granted the metaphysical status of being a real thing from an objective standpoint (as it exists in a certain class of beings), "meaning of life" could be granted the metaphysical status of being a real thing from an objective standpoint (as it exists in a certain class of beings). This is important enough in and of itself to merit alot of thinking about. Second to this, since we are agreed that we can define concepts such as free will and meaning of life wrt to individual viewpoints but from an objective standpoint, there may be some means to correlate such metaphysical phenomena across various boundaries. A simple example: we could compare the free will of a healthy human to one suffering from OCD (this is a question about a concept which some would say is very slippery, and yet we can easily see how science can tell us that one person has more of it than another). More interestingly, we could in principle compare the meaning of life of different sentient organisms; just as we determined through modern psychology that an OCD sufferer has less free will than a healthy person, we could compare and contrast "meaning of life". Third of all, are there, or could there be in principle, law like correlations among "meaning of life" from an objective standpoint? is there some system by which they are all formed? There is certainly such a system in all beings possessing free will (only decision making entities can possess it, for example), so presumably there could be one governing all beings with a meaning of life. These overarching metaphysical definitions would, if they existed, provide a completely objective meaning of life, in the format of a law of nature. While this may not convince you of the possibility of ever finding a grand meaning of life, surely it suggests to you that the search itself is not completely misguided -there seem to be reasons to suspect that there might be an answer, and that the question is not completely senseless.

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