Rishon Rishon

I don't see a deep conflict between Pixy's created meaning and David's discovered meaning. Was the Mandelbrot Set created or discovered? In practice, when pursuing any kind of activity or project, our goals co-evolve with our discoveries. This is an objective, non-arbitrary process. And it must be true for life as a whole, since what is life but a giant project? The project is to realise our culturally-inherited values and try to discover new, better values through reason and experience. To the extent that we succeed, our lives are meaningful. I think nihilists are just pessimists, people who have failed to discover consistent, worthwhile goals. They grow to hate people who have apparently succeeded where they have failed, and who retain their love of life; such people are a standing refutation of their moral worldview.

Btw, I don't think human meaningfulness can be reduced to a biological explanation, as Jinnderella seems to suggest, any more than the properties of browser software can be explained solely by reference to silicon wafers. Human brains are knowledge-transmitting and knowledge-creating machines, and so differences in human behaviour cannot for long be captured by any finite theory. This is because there's still an infinite amount of knowledge "out there" waiting to be discovered!

Tom: A very good point.

Whether one creates (invents) or discovers the Mandelbrot set is one of perspective - one seeing mathematics as a tool that you use to create things (which can then be used as tools to create other things), the other seeing mathematics as a whole, waiting to be discovered. Both depend on the validity of mathematics to derive their own validity.

Similarly, whether one creates or discovers something that gives meaning to your life, its meaning depends on there being a fundamental meaning to existence. Do you think Pixy Misa believes that the Islamists' created meaning is just as valid as his own?

Our problem is that we cannot prove that one "created meaning" is true, the other false. Nevertheless we believe it.

And I recoil from the idea that because I cannot prove it, therefore it doesn't exist.

We can't prove anything. But we still know things. This is what Karl Popper taught us.

Elliot: If we can't prove anything, then at least we need a heuristic method. I liked your tetris post illustrating just that.

In the future, feel free to give us links to relevant posts!

Glad you liked it.

I don't think we need a heuristic method. Arguments either work or they don't, just like propositions are true or false. If my arguments say something is true, I tentatively adopt that position as true, never as 80% likely to be true.

you can of course design silly exceptions by asking things like "i'm gonna roll two dice. if i get a 7, this statement will be considered true, otherwise false. pick if it's true now" but i think if we are willing to fix questions when we need to, instead of trying to fit an answer to any question, it works. for example in this case, answer, "it is *true* that you have a 1/6 chance of rolling a 7, 5/6 of not" even though that's not strictly what the question was.

Elliot: Surely you don't think the answer to the question, "How to live?" has a yes/no answer!

Neither does, "What is meaningful?" or "What makes me happy?"

(All closely related questions.)

I meant propositions like "We should live X way" are true/false. ie, potential answers to those questions are right or wrong.

btw i do think wrong answers often have lots of truth in them.

The question you would have to ask is, "Is living X way better than the way I am living now?"

Asking this question repeatedly as new Xs come up is a heuristic method.

Hi David. I missed this back when you posted it.

Perhaps I should explain myself further:

My position is that the Universe does not have meaning. The Universe simply is. (That's somewhat tautological, because I define the Universe as what exists, but anyway...)

Meaning is what intelligence generates when applied to the Universe. It does not, indeed cannot exist of itself; it is the product of the process of thought.

All this is just fluffy bunnies though unless we defined meaning. Until you do that, you can't say, for example, what you mean when you say "it would imply that an Islamist’s meaning is just as meaningful as Pixy Misa’s".

Certainly my worldview is more founded in reality, more productive, more conducive to happiness and learning in myself and my fellow man, than that of the Islamists. Does that make the "meaning" I have created for myself more "valid" than the "meaning" the Islamists have created for themselves? I dunno. But it's a hell of a lot better.