First you have to answer, what is ‘life”?
Then you have to answer, what is meaning?
The answer is I don’t know, but it’s the most important question to try to grope around at an answer for.” Cosmologist, Brian Cox

https://youtu.be/k-vm3ZWnMWk

Fascinating discussion, with a biologist and a cosmologist, but no mention of virus, or the RNA and DNA they transport, along with motor proteins they carry that do the work of performing genetic surgery on their hosts DNA to unzip it and replace the half helix of DNA with single helix of RNA, to creat a hybrid organism, called a virocell, a transitional organism that is a factory devoted to making 100 copies of the virus in 24 hours.

in b 4 ~ it is 42 OPie ~

ziller Wrote:
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> in b 4 ~ it is 42 OPie ~

I read that the author of “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” was Douglas Adams, a computer geek and in the most basic computer language, ASCII, 42 is a wildcard, or *, meaning, whatever you want it to mean. So the computer they ask about the meaning of life, thinks about it for a long time and comes back with,”42” or whatever you want it to be.

https://medium.com/@lgm527/42-cbcb2773bcab

“Douglas Adams was a British author who dabbled in all media (radio, books, television, movies, computer games, etc.) It was well known that he was interested in computers for many reasons. Besides the fact he created a computer game, he also wrote and presented a documentary tv series Hyperland which features interviews with Ted Nelson, who co-founded and coined the term hypertext. On a more personal note, he was the first person in Europe to buy a Mac in 1984, and even bought his first word processor in 1982. Adams became a spokesman for Apple, spoke at some technical conferences, and was a keynote speaker at the April 2001 Embedded Systems Conference. Lastly, his biography on his book’s jacket-flap sums it up:
“He [Adams] lives in Islington with a lady barrister and an Apple Macintosh”
The last theory to mention is that 42 refers to its ASCII code. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is the encoding standard for electronic communication, which was published in 1963. The character represented by ASCII code 42 is the *(asterisk). If you do not possess any programming knowledge, you might make an inference that it points to the ‘star’ which make up the universe. That is also not a bad theory, but when you know a little bit about programming, specifically regular expressions, the meaning of the * goes deeper.
In regular expressions, the * is often referred to as a wildcard character. Not quite the Charlie Day wildcard, but similar to how a wildcard works.
Search patterns are defined in programming using regular expressions. The regex (https://regexr.com/) is used in string searching algorithms. It is common to use an * as a placeholder that can be interpreted as a string of any literal characters or even an empty string. So, what is the value of the *? Well, it can be whatever you want it to be! This ultimately suggests that we are meant to create our own answer and 42 is simply a placeholder for however each individual defines it. Considering Adams’ undeniable interest in computers, this theory is a strong contender.”

42 is also the angle of incidence between where red lies in a rainbow

What is the meaning of death ?

Recycling.

We get recycled into worm shit, the most valuable by product on planet earth.

"it’s the most important question to try to grope around at an answer for"

I doubt many dogs and cats give it much thought. Certainly not dogs.

bradley Wrote:
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> "it’s the most important question to try to
> grope around at an answer for"
>
> I doubt many dogs and cats give it much thought.
> Certainly not dogs.


Dogs are pretty sure you are God raining down Mana from Heaven
Cats believe they are God and you are just there to serve them and pick up their shit. couldn’t give a shit, you love them so much.
But come back next time Earth is here for n the Milky Way, in 225million years from now, house Cats will be the size of humans and the smartest one will be in a wheelchair saying,”Don’t develop nukes! Remember those stupid humans?”

Left the house with a house sitter. Called me, day one, told me my cat died. I said “Jeeze, ease into it will you? Maybe say, the cat is on the roof and no one knows how to get it down”
House sitter called me the next day and told me grandma is on the roof.

Ha! You're the only person outside of my family I've ever heard tell this joke. It's common for people in my family to inform of a death with the phrase <person> "is on the roof and won't come down."

LOL'd ~

Maybe the reason the answer seems so hard for most people is that they're expecting some kind of universal, all-encompassing, all-explaining, never-changing thing when, perhaps, meaning is a personal, individual, flexible, changing thing. Because, heck, I grew up being force fed a meaning that was rather meaningless to me.

“We are on this earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
- Kurt Vonnegut, Man without a Country

"Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations".
--Monty Python

They didn't mention viruses because that would have been beside the point. They were talking thermodynamics and the complex systems that emerge as entropy increases from minimum to maximum. Life processes seem to be powered by an increase in disorder. From this, they create local order at the expense of overall increased disorder. So, that's the definition. It even works for Pantheism. If everything is conscious, where do you draw the line?

You might wonder what happens to the information consumed by life, what it is, and where it goes. That is still a mystery. No mention is made of the akash. They did mention the thermodynamic aspects of the cellular proton pump of ATP. The connection to the akash is integrated into oxidative reduction of ATP at a higher level of consciousness, so I would put the dividing line there. Cells are alive, viruses are not, even if they have a kind of proto-consciousness.

Always look on the bright side of life


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLqzLEB3E0

Life: Designed by intelligence
Meaning: Two core things - Outer/meaning Surviving against the laws of nature. Inner/meaning in life is to discover the creation made by the intelligence.

I mean to live.

I think Olderolder is on the right track.

Life has absolutely no meaning other than the meaning you as an individual give to it.

"Life has absolutely no meaning other than the meaning you as an individual give to it."

COMMENT: Yes, the 'meaning of life' is fundamentally tied to conscious human agents who are self-aware and capable of reflecting on 'the meaning of life.' Thus, if you remove such beings from the universe, then indeed life has no meaning. But, after all, we are here! What does that tell us?

Upon personal reflection, the universe can be either denied metaphysical meaning, or assigned metaphysical meaning in the form of a worldview. A classic example of this is when Nobel Laurette Steven Weinberg famously quipped:

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."

Contrast that with the equally famous statement by the equally accomplished physicist, Freeman Dyson:

“The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.”

I guess meaning, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder!

In any event, these statements reflect contrasting worldviews, suggesting that 'the meaning of life' for each individual reflects the worldview they choose to adopt. If you choose to adopt a worldview that life (and the universe) is meaningless, then for you it will be meaningless. If you choose to adopt a view that life (and the universe) is meaningful then for you it will be.

But we might further ask, "Is there not a 'fact of the matter' about the meaningfulness (or lack of meaning) of life (and the universe)?" Personally, I think a tentative answer might be that there is, and that the default position should be on the side of Dyson. The fact that life, consciousness, and intelligence exist in the universe is an indication that the scientific materialist view of "pointlessness" is shortsighted, and that there is likely an objective, metaphysical, meaning to life and the universe, that transcends Weinberg's scientific nihilism; a meaning to be sought after, more or less discovered, and adopted into one's worldview.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> the universe in some sense must have known we were
> coming.”

Ah, one of those, "It's all about us" people. Fooey. We're just one of zillions of things that are possible to exist within these conditions.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But, after all, we are here! What does
> that tell us?

The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

—Sylvia Plath—
—“Morning Song”—



> I guess meaning, like beauty, is in the eye of the
> beholder!

(The two quotes: nice juxtaposition, Henry.)

Yes, but both of them had about as much choice of their worldview as they had a choice of whom to fall in love with. Nor do I believe their statements as anything like a final, concrete thought about their actual, embodied view of themselves, the world, and the totality of the Universe. Like everybody else, their actual view is beyond words.

The problem is that our willed, rational and conscious thinking is so very small a slice of the totality of our experience now that our bald cry has become part of the Universe. No matter how much pride we feel in our intellect, we are not Spock. Even the simplest of our emotions are notoriously difficult to organize into thoughts, into language. Attempts always come up short and often miss altogether. And of course, our emotions are also notoriously difficult to suppress and control, and are largely outside the purview of our will. Try it. Try willing yourself to love something that you don’t, try valuing something that you don’t, try believing something that you don’t. Now contrast that difficulty with the ease in which we can think, the ease in which we can work outa syllogism, say.

I think it’d be nice to wake up every morning feeling like Blake’s Glad Day:

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/glad-day-or-the-dance-of-albion-1796-william-blake.html

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

—Ernest Hemingway—
—The Sun Also Rises—


The problem with the scientific materialist point of view is that it pretends that the essence of our life, our *experience* of it, doesn’t exist. Qualia doesn’t actually exist^. Our initial bald cry is nothing more than…

Human

^Too baldly stated to be true, of course; but you know what I mean. Cheers.

"Yes, but both of them had about as much choice of their worldview as they had a choice of whom to fall in love with."

COMMENT: Well, perhaps significantly, Dyson was a theist, and Weinberg is an atheist, and no doubt their respective backgrounds had something to do with how their worldviews turned out. (Scientifically, their experiences were relevantly similar and materialistic)

That said, I am perhaps naive in insisting that we *do* freely shape our worldview by the myriad of choices we make as we navigate through life, notwithstanding environmental constraints. We all have experiences--mundane and sublime--which we can more-or-less reflect on, reason about, and try to interpret, while allowing or not allowing a metaphysical component in our musings and explanations. Ironically, even the most strident atheists, like Weinberg, acknowledge and promote values and free will, within their personal response to life, and their expectations of others. What they do not realize is that this very fact invites metaphysical meaning as part of human agency, and therefore in the universe itself. He (and others like him) CHOOSE to ignore this obvious contradiction when formulating their intellectual worldviews. It is a quite amazing case of compartmentalization.
_____________________________________________

"Nor do I believe their statements as anything like a final, concrete thought about their actual, embodied view of themselves, the world, and the totality of the Universe. Like everybody else, their actual view is beyond words."

COMMENT: Yes, our worldviews are dynamic and transitive. The question is whether we pay attention at all, and if we do, whether we actively allow our worldview to evolve as we shape them by our thoughts, choices, actions, and experiences. Perhaps because some of our most nuanced and sublime experiences are difficult to verbalize, they are easier to thoughtlessly dismiss.
______________________________________________

"The problem is that our willed, rational and conscious thinking is so very small a slice of the totality of our experience now that our bald cry has become part of the Universe. No matter how much pride we feel in our intellect, we are not Spock. Even the simplest of our emotions are notoriously difficult to organize into thoughts, into language. Attempts always come up short and often miss altogether."

COMMENT: I would say that the meaning of life is in large part learning to think about our experiences in non-superficial ways, even if such thinking leads to a wonderment and confusion that transcends language. Sometimes when such experiences do defy language, we thereby recognize a transcendent character of the experience. This is why materialist writers often invoke language like "The Sacred Depths of Nature" (Ursala Goodenough), or think we need to "Reinvent the Sacred" (Kauffman), or invoke some sort of "Poetic Naturalism" (Sean Carroll). They are responding to an experiences of life and nature that transcends their scientific worldview, yet have no idea how to characterize it, much less fit it into a rational, materialist worldview.
____________________________________________

"And of course, our emotions are also notoriously difficult to suppress and control, and are largely outside the purview of our will. Try it. Try willing yourself to love something that you don’t, try valuing something that you don’t, try believing something that you don’t. Now contrast that difficulty with the ease in which we can think, the ease in which we can work outa syllogism, say."

COMMENT: Difficult, yes. Impossible, no. Our free will is broad and powerful in our thoughts and actions, as is our power of self-reflection. But it must be exercised! That is why cognitive behavioral therapy (Psychoanalysis) works, even though scientifically it is deemed to be fringe at best, and pseudoscience at worst. Moreover, that is why we can ultimately choose our worldviews, and thereby find meaning (or not) in life.
_______________________________________

The problem with the scientific materialist point of view is that it pretends that the essence of our life, our *experience* of it, doesn’t exist. Qualia doesn’t actually exist^. Our initial bald cry is nothing more than…

COMMENT: Most scientific materialists acknowledge that subjective experience and qualia exist. (It is just too obvious for most to deny) Yet they minimize its significance, calling it merely an incidental 'property' of the brain, or an epiphenomena. In one fell swoop, genuine free will and with it humanistic values are swept under the rug. But then they close their books, go home to the wife (or husband) and children, and engage in life in ordinary, meaningful, ways.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It is a quite amazing
> case of compartmentalization.

Yes, it is.



> Perhaps because some of our most
> nuanced and sublime experiences are difficult to
> verbalize, they are easier to thoughtlessly
> dismiss.

Sometimes the most ardent intellectual projects are actually attempts to dismiss something profoundly *felt*.



> They are responding to
> an experiences of life and nature that transcends
> their scientific worldview, yet have no idea how
> to characterize it, much less fit it into a
> rational, materialist worldview.

The reason I wouldn’t look to science for *meaning*.



> Our free
> will is broad and powerful in our thoughts and
> actions, as is our power of self-reflection. But
> it must be exercised!

In our thoughts and actions, yes. I was talking about our emotions. I agree, not impossible.



> COMMENT: Most scientific materialists acknowledge
> that subjective experience and qualia exist.

Right. My footnote was to avoid all the various degrees and nuances qualia is denied/minimized/avoided/etc.



Henry, ever notice how I place emphasis on the emotions and you do all you can to recast things into thoughts and actions? The bottom line for me is that the meaning of life™️ isn’t something that is thought about, rather it is something that is experienced; and that the mass bulk of our experience is emotional rather than intellectual; and that our emotions are largely outside our direct volition.



When Done & Done posed the mean of life question a month or so ago, asking what is the point, I wanted to answer like this:

“To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point.”

--D.H. Lawrence--
--"Why the Novel Matters"--

"The reason I wouldn’t look to science for *meaning*."

COMMENT: Humans have a wealth of resources from which to consider life's meaning; both personally and metaphysically. Science is one of them. So, you have to add "solely" to your comment. And the same "not solely" would or should be applied to any single limited resource for life's meaning, including religion, poetry, literature, some book, or an RfM poster.
______________________________________________

"Henry, ever notice how I place emphasis on the emotions and you do all you can to recast things into thoughts and actions? The bottom line for me is that the meaning of life™️ isn’t something that is thought about, rather it is something that is experienced; and that the mass bulk of our experience is emotional rather than intellectual; and that our emotions are largely outside our direct volition."

COMMENT: Yes, I've noticed that. And I will tell you why I do that. Emotional responses surface largely involuntarily, and we are then left to deal with them, rationally or reflexively.
In contrast, thoughts and actions often arise voluntarily, as a product of will, and are more naturally subject to rational deliberation and assessment. Neither science nor rationality are enemies of the sublime nature of some of human experience. Rationality is what identifies such experiences as transcendent to science, and is what points to a metaphysical content that evades science. The more one knows about science, the easier it is (or should be) to realize its limitations. All of the authors I mentioned arrived at their "sacred nature" conclusions by realizing that raw experiences of nature do not fit neatly into their materialist, scientific, worldview. (Despite their resistance to that conclusion.) That is an intellectual judgment, not an emotional one! Kauffman, in particular came to his conclusion after a 30+ year career looking in vain for the laws of self-organization that are needed to explain biological complexity.

I am troubled by any account of worldview formation that excludes thought and reason in favor of just raw experience. Again, human resources that are available to knowledge and understanding of reality are pluralistic. The fact that any one such resource is limited (or often misused) is not grounds for excluding it. Personally, my appreciation for the metaphysical, transcendent aspects of reality is largely driven by my understanding of science.

I like Kurt Vonnegut's explanation best.

"The meaning of life is to get each other through "all this," whatever "all this" turns out to be.

So let's do it.

Lois

Yes ... "each other" ...

Won't get anywhere with this track because it's a Möbius strip --
if ask instead from where/what is the drive to assign meaning, and the endless implications of that, now that'll take one to some interesting places

The purpose of life is to learn to live happily, to get satisfied. Life or the soul is concienseness, the ability to make a choice and have feelings, robots haven't got this.

No wonder rolling stones are miserable.

I think you pretty much said it. Life is whatever each individual, thinking being thinks it is.

We all assign meanings to things, sometimes the same, sometimes different. We also get conditioned by others (parents, religion, etc) to think/feel something has a particular meaning.
The meaning of a gun for a gang member might be power and bravado. The meaning of a gun to an outdoorsman might mean utility for food or fun. Some might view guns as a tool of self defense. Guns might mean threat or a sign of societal warfare.

I think we all holding different views of what life means to them. Mormons and most religious folks view life as a necessary means to another life. Atheists or agnostics see life as temporary and so consciously or subconsciously find meaning in life in other ways.

To me, trying to define “the meaning of life,” is a human construct. It’s a philosophical thought. But I think life means whatever we each individually decide it is. To me, life doesn’t REALLY have meaning. Random forces of nature eventually created self replicating biological material that eventually evolved a species, us, that are capable of developing language and the intelligence to ponder the “meaning” of our life. Scientifically, there probably is no meaning for life other than to explain how we were created and how we function. Philosophically we can each come up with one or more meanings for life. I view the meaning of for MY life is to enjoy it to the fullest, while, at the same time trying to also respect other people’s lives, who share the same space I do, as well.

That then leads to what makes people happy in this life and that’s going to differ for every person. But if someone is not happy on their life, then maybe they haven’t been able to discover the meaning or purpose in their life yet.

There is no meaning. You are just here.

I'd shorten it to you are your meaning.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2022 02:03PM by Elder Berry.

You didn't shorten it, you extended it!

The comment: "There is no meaning. You are just here." is inconsistent with life as understood by evolutionary biology. All of life is endowed with purpose as assigned by the values of reproduction and survival that are associated with life itself. Thus, in that limited sense, life itself is endowed with meaning. (Even a bacterium follows a glucose gradient for the 'purpose' of metabolic enrichment and thus reproduction and genetic survival.)

When you extend this "just here" characterization to "You are your meaning," you are enhancing life's inherent meaning by adding the more complex purposes that are inherent in conscious human agency. The values associated with human agency are also more nuanced, complex, and personal. As such, the meaning in a person's life is his or her own doing (just as you say).

Note: There is no such thing as a 'meaning vacuum' as related to life. Meaning is forced upon us by life itself. What we do with it (how we frame that meaning), by way of our enhanced cognitive capacities and free will, is our choice.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> The comment: "There is no meaning. You are just
> here." is inconsistent with life as understood by
> evolutionary biology. All of life is endowed with
> purpose as assigned by the values of reproduction
> and survival that are associated with life itself.
> Thus, in that limited sense, life itself is
> endowed with meaning. (Even a bacterium follows a
> glucose gradient for the 'purpose' of metabolic
> enrichment and thus reproduction and genetic
> survival.)

“Purpose” and “meaning” are not synonymous. There is purpose in going poo, but that doesn’t make it meaningful.

Sometimes it is.

Yes, that is true. But when 'purpose' is associated with actions related to survival or quality of life, 'meaning' is not far away. And, as a practical matter, biologists are more inclined to accept purpose in biology (reluctantly, I might add) than they are to apply meaning. My point is that in this context they are very close.

(In fact, biologist hate the word 'teleology,' so they invented a new word, 'teleonomy' to distinguish organismic 'purpose' from 'final causation.' (Evolutionary direction) The bottom line, however, is that both are 'end driven' explanations as opposed to strictly traditional causal explanations.)

"The values associated with human agency are also more nuanced, complex, and personal."

It is a matter of perspective. If you think there is nothing but simply being how can I do anything but simplify it to your being. The rooms we inhabit are lonelier with mirrored walls.

"If you think there is nothing but simply being how can I do anything but simplify it to your being."

COMMENT: My point is that with life there is no such thing as "simply being." That is death, not life! Nobody lives their life literally 'aimlessly.' Rather, their choices and actions are just thought to be short-sighted, hedonistic, or valueless. But, even in such cases, their mode of behavior *is* their 'life's purpose' and reflects their worldview. After all, they still eat and therefore continue to search for a minimal 'glucose gradient' from which to survive.

I would not have said simply being but death if that is what I meant. Your words don't fit in my mouth.

Crush your enemies.

See them driven before you.

And hear the lamentation
Of their women.