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What is the meaning of the meaning of life?

Cogito ergo sum is something that we really mistranslate.

I think therefore I am puts so much focus on 'I'. there is no I

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9 out of 10 may disagree
 
Cogito ergo sum is something that we really mistranslate.

I think therefore I am puts so much focus on 'I'. there is no I
Descartes wondered if there was an "I", and realised that the fact that he was doubting that there was an "I" proved that there was one. The thing doing the doubting was the “I”. So he wrote “I think, therefore I am”. If you do not think that there is an “I”, then who is doing your thinking?
 
So you are nothing to do with this?


I must admit that I lived in Britain in the 1970s, and not the USA, and my friends and I had cassette recorders but never, ever, did we record messages to each other and throw them into the front gardens of our friends. I doubt that anyone in the USA did either. The woman in the video and her friends must have been very peculiar. Perhaps they were all suffering from a contagious disease.

People of my generation sometimes made mixtapes of pop songs that we exchanged with each other in person.

I did once know someone whose father communicated with his family via the exchange of cassettes by post, but then he was from Somalia, and his family living there were illiterate.
 
Descartes wondered if there was an "I", and realised that the fact that he was doubting that there was an "I" proved that there was one. The thing doing the doubting was the “I”. So he wrote “I think, therefore I am”. If you do not think that there is an “I”, then who is doing your thinking?

It proves that there is consciousness, but it does not follow that there is an 'I'

Whatever it is that we call I exists because it is experiencing something, but it does not prove that us calling this 'I' is correct because that implies that every conscious being is having that experience, which is not provable. There is that 'Zombie Argument' that seems to refute the Cogito for me; consciousness is irrefutable but ownership of it is not.
 
It proves that there is consciousness, but it does not follow that there is an 'I'

Whatever it is that we call I exists because it is experiencing something, but it does not prove that us calling this 'I' is correct because that implies that every conscious being is having that experience, which is not provable. There is that 'Zombie Argument' that seems to refute the Cogito for me; consciousness is irrefutable but ownership of it is not.
I don't believe that it implies anything about others, but it proves that I am an "I".
 
I don't believe that it implies anything about others, but it proves that I am an "I".

If there is only one 'I' then it's not 'I'. The reason that 'he, she, we etc' exist is to differentiate, since the cogito can only prove 'I' it becomes redundant. Something exists, we experience it as 'I' but we don't know if it is how we perceive it as an 'I' in a world full of beings who are also 'I' or we are the only thing in existence which would make it 'us' or 'it'
 
We like to add meaning to life, even if there is none, because otherwise what would stop the anarchy?

We are important to people close to us, but to the wider public we are a meaningless statistic.

If you think of all the trillions of grains of sand in the Gobi desert. Each grain supports it's immediate neighbours, but on the grand scale of things each is meaningless. We are a single grain of sand.
 
Life has no meaning that we didn't already create ourselves.

Some people think that it's a grim prospect to live in a universe which hasn't had meaning stamped into its fabric by some anthropomorphic creator entity. I disagree. We have a great freedom living in a world which isn't some overgrown ape's plaything.
 
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Life has no meaning that we didn't already create ourselves.

Some people think that it's a grim prospect to live in a universe which hasn't had meaning stamped into its fabric by some anthropomorphic creator entity. I disagree. We are have a great freedom living in a world which isn't some overgrown ape's plaything.
What does it mean to create meaning? I could decide that I will spend my spare time reading novels, but does it make sense for me to say that the meaning of my life is reading novels? Messages have meaning, words have meanings, but how can what we do have meaning?
 
What does it mean to create meaning? I could decide that I will spend my spare time reading novels, but does it make sense for me to say that the meaning of my life is reading novels?

That's a question that only you can answer, surely? You talk as if there's something objective about this, when the very notion of meaning is tied up in subjectivity.

Messages have meaning, words have meanings, but how can what we do have meaning?

Because it's done with a meaning in the mind of the one doing it. Like, someone who spends their time reading novels may do it simply for pleasure, or as a hobby or profession (reviewing books).
 
That's a question that only you can answer, surely? You talk as if there's something objective about this, when the very notion of meaning is tied up in subjectivity.



Because it's done with a meaning in the mind of the one doing it. Like, someone who spends their time reading novels may do it simply for pleasure, or as a hobby or profession (reviewing books).
I like your repy, but I am unconvinced. I am not sure that it makes sense to say that the meaning of my life is reading novels. I am not sure that it makes sense to say that the life we live can have a "meaning". The definitions of "meaning" in the dictionary do not seem to conform to the usage the word in the phrase "the meaning of life".
 
I like your repy, but I am unconvinced. I am not sure that it makes sense to say that the meaning of my life is reading novels. I am not sure that it makes sense to say that the life we live can have a "meaning". The definitions of "meaning" in the dictionary do not seem to conform to the usage the word in the phrase "the meaning of life".

If you don't think reading novels makes sense as a meaning in life, then it's no meaning for you.

I think replacing the word "meaning" with "purpose" gets closer to the real nub of the question. What is the purpose of life? It has no inherent purpose, we are naturally evolved rather than specially created, and the universe we live in bears no message, signature or directive that we can comprehend. So we inherit nothing in terms of purpose.
 
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Why should life have purpose?

Except perhaps to continue itself - propagation.

We can create our own individual purposes if it otherwise seems too pointless to us.
 
Meaning is something that humans try to describe but at the end of the day we are just a collective bag of molecules that have organised into an animal so that DNA can replicate. We have no meaning past the continued replication of DNA. Nothing else matters.

Happy days :thumbs:
 
I think 'truth', or scientific advancement and understanding is a big part of it. Claims that can be tested. Then a shared equal, mutual solidarity or advancement for all of humanity.
 
Meaning is something that humans try to describe but at the end of the day we are just a collective bag of molecules that have organised into an animal so that DNA can replicate. We have no meaning past the continued replication of DNA. Nothing else matters.

Happy days :thumbs:

Bit sixth form.
 
I think 'truth', or scientific advancement and understanding is a big part of it. Claims that can be tested. Then a shared equal, mutual solidarity or advancement for all of humanity.

I think most people perceive ‘truth’ in terms
of power and belonging, as opposed to any kind of alignment with an external reality. The scientific method is a very niche hobby.
 
L
I think 'truth', or scientific advancement and understanding is a big part of it. Claims that can be tested. Then a shared equal, mutual solidarity or advancement for all of humanity.
Scientific advancement? You're having a fucking laugh. When do you expect to see sems or afah?
 
You have to be careful asking about the meaning of life, especially if you might decide that there isn't a lot of meaning to your life at the moment.

One might ask, what is the point? Why bother? Who cares? Why am I doing this?

Better instead perhaps to stay engaged in the safety of the hamster wheel of life ..
 
You have to be careful asking about the meaning of life, especially if you might decide that there isn't a lot of meaning to your life at the moment.

One might ask, what is the point? Why bother? Who cares? Why am I doing this?

Better instead perhaps to stay engaged in the safety of the hamster wheel of life ..

...and you wake up back in your room and none of this ever happened...
 
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