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diff --git a/content/entry/the-meaning-of-life.md b/content/entry/the-meaning-of-life.md index d7416b0..2f2e1a5 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-meaning-of-life.md +++ b/content/entry/the-meaning-of-life.md @@ -2,10 +2,9 @@ title: "The Meaning of Life" date: 2021-03-04T00:00:00 draft: false -makerefs: false --- # Disclaimer -I said in a previous post[1] that posts tagged spirituality aren't to be interpreted as truth-apt[2] and that I wanted to be clearer about how to interpret these posts. Well this post is an exception. Do interpret it as making truth claims. I'm going to be more rigorous than I normally am in spiritual posts and try not to make any false claims. So let's get started. +I said in a [previous post](/2021/01/17/on-spirituality) that posts tagged spirituality aren't to be interpreted as [truth-apt](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth-apt) and that I wanted to be clearer about how to interpret these posts. Well this post is an exception. Do interpret it as making truth claims. I'm going to be more rigorous than I normally am in spiritual posts and try not to make any false claims. So let's get started. # The Meaning of Life It's 42, obviously. @@ -20,13 +19,13 @@ Here's an analogy: In a sense, saying life has no meaning is equally nonsensical ## Examining the Meaning of Life Human adults have a strong tendency to infer agency in explanations of regular patterns in nature. Children and infants especially do, before they know how the world actually works. There was a study in developmental psychology published at the University of Berkeley in which preverbal infants were also indicated to have this bias. See the link below. -[Academic Paper][3] +[Academic Paper](https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~babylab/MaXu2013) This bias is human nature. It remains true across every culture and every society. We didn't understand how life on earth came to be, so what did we do? We invented an intelligent agent called god to be the cause. We didn't understand why the stars shined or why the sun rose or what made the tides go in and out. Must be god or gods. This god or gods also played an important role in giving us a strong sense of morality and ultimate purpose. Morality was simply the will of god. The purpose of life was enter some version of heaven. Even godless religions had enlightenment as a goal. In any case, the point is there was some clear, well-defined goal. Now, we have scientific explanations for life and the atheists among us have "outgrown" the god hypothesis. And as we learned Darwinian evolution produced life and not a god, we had to think of alternative sources of morality and meaning because god no longer existed in our minds to provide us those things. I've already talked about a moral framework based on hypothetical imperatives which is universal and does not require a god. See the link below. -[Metaethics][4] +[Metaethics](/2020/10/11/metaethics) So, morality is safe despite a godless world. But meaning is different. It doesn't seem so easily replaced. At least, the strong sense of ultimate purpose we had before seems difficult to replace. The basic problem is this: There's nothing "written in the clouds" telling us the point of life is. Nothing about the way the world is tells us how it should be (morality) and nothing about the way the world is tells us what matters in it (meaning), and it seems that nothing ever could. @@ -55,10 +54,3 @@ Why should purpose have to be divine? Doesn't it make more sense to talk about m At the end of the day this is really the only useful notion of meaning. There's no apparent "divine" meaning in the universe and if there were we'd probably rebel against it. We can of course observe our purpose from other points of view such as that of a gene or even a factory. From the perspective of a factory, the purpose of humans is to keep it running. But those perspectives are mostly just entertaining intellectual exercises and not what we really mean when we talk about our lives having meaning. In summary, you should look inward for meaning. Don't try to find meaning for your life outside of your life. You'll become a nihilist not because your life is meaningless but because you're using a definition of meaning which has no personal significance to you. You're just defining yourself into a corner on purpose. In looking for meaning "out there", you overlook the gold mine of meaning within. You give your own life meaning in each moment and there's no reason it has to come from anywhere else. - - -Link(s): -[1: /2021/01/17/on-spirituality](/2021/01/17/on-spirituality/) -[2: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth-apt](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth-apt) -[3: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~babylab/MaXu2013](https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~babylab/MaXu2013) -[4: /2020/10/11/metaethics](/2020/10/11/metaethics/) |