The Meaninglessness of Meaning

[Kingpin]

I'm no expert, but it is my understanding that there is no serious debate about evolution; it's been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Macro and micro evolution are the same thing, just looking at different time frames.

This candid admission is from the evolutionist journal Nature:  

"Darwin anticipated that microevolution would be a process of continuous and gradual change.  The term macroevolution, by contrast, refers to the origin of new species and divisions of the taxonomic hierarchy above the species level, and also to the origin of complex adaptations, such as the vertebrate eye.  Macroevolution posed a problem to Darwin because his principle of descent with modification predicts gradual transitions between small-scale adaptive changes in populations and these larger-scale phenomena, yet there is little evidence for such transitions in nature.  Instead, the natural world is often characterized by gaps, or discontinuities.  One type of gap relates to the existence of 'organs of extreme perfection', such as the eye, or morphological innovations, such as wings, both of which are found fully formed in present-day organisms without leaving evidence of how they evolved."-- Reznick, David N., Robert E. Ricklefs. 12 February 2009. Darwin's bridge between microevolution and macroevolution. Nature, Vol. 457, pp. 837-842.

[Ben Davis]

Essentially, from an "objective" standpoint, it would seem that no "state of affairs" in the world has any meaning. Consider the happenstance asteroid that collides with the moon; a worm that gets ravished by a bird; the love that a human feels for his or her offspring. We assign meaning, to a higher or lesser degree, to a variety of objects, believing that the very act of valuing something - that is, possessing strong feelings of pleasure towards it that include aims of temporarily "preserving" its illusory equilibrium - confers upon it meaningful attributes, or a quality of meaningfulness. But is this more than a linguistic trick that in actuality serves only to describe the affections, or chemical changes, that such objects cause in our bodies and our brains - to our center of consciousness, that socially and psychologically construed identity - our "selves"? Does such a chemical change, not fundamentally unlike the physical alterations that occur when water is heated to boil or cooled to freeze, justify our rationalization and usage of terms like value and meaning?

Mr. Cup Half Empty!

I prefer to think in the opposite way from the same premise: from an objective standpoint, any "state of affairs" could have meaning because meaning is subjective. To cut a long story short, that gives everything meaning.

I cannot help but consider that, objectively speaking, we - illusory selves - are but a meaningless "state of affairs," or physical processes, like the asteroid hurling through space, like the worm sacrificing itself for the sustenance of the bird, yet differing in one aspect, its importance not yet properly measured or understood - we are capable of creating the delusion in which "I" have a "meaningful" existence. Is this feature a possible buttress to the seemingly inevitable logical conclusion of physicalism that "'objectively speaking,' no state of affairs possesses 'intrinsic' value or meaning"? For perhaps such powers of creation do reveal physical processes imbued with meaning - even if they are processes that exclusively reveal themselves in the abstract - and it is in the abstract that meaning is not meaningless . . . but what does "existence in the abstract" mean in the context of objectivity?

Since 'meaning' is subjective and dependent on individual/group experience, perception etc., it's almost insultingly condescending yet critically important to state that it's not a physically existent object in its own right: I can't grab a handful of meaning and apply it to another thing in order to imbue meaning in that thing. However that's exactly what the mind does in it's internal model; some meanings become so complicit with their object, to the individual, that they can never be replaced or lost. It's a mental tool, developed over time, that provides us with a model of 'relative importance' to objects. That model can directly influence our survival rates which explains why so many 'meanings' are shared within a cultural memeplex. Philosophically, it's counter-productive to dismiss 'meaning' as meaningless because in reality, it can mean everything, even our very existence!

[Pyrrho]

---

We can all pretty well know why you like this example, as it reminds you of Paley's watch.

The point though, it that stuff doing things and interacting with other things gives rise to additional properties not in the constituent parts separately.  A fire gives off heat, but the log before it burns may be cold, as may the oxygen necessary for burning to take place.  It is the chemical reaction that gives off heat, not the individual chemicals by themselves.

It is important to remember such things to avoid committing the fallacy of composition and the fallacy of division.




The "right order" is defined in terms of whatever it takes for them to give the specified result.  Thus in the case of the clock example, whatever arrangement it is that would allow it to tell time.

As for your question about a mind or being unguided and mindless, it does not matter how the order occurs; a fire is a fire whether it occurs naturally or is made by a person who intends to make a fire.




The "right order" is defined in terms of whatever is necessary for the specified result.  In order for there to be a fire, there needs to be fuel and oxygen and some catalyst to get the fire going.  A fire is a fire whether it occurs due to nature or design.




In the case of a clock, I know going into the matter that it is made by people and is not natural.  (Not to mention the fact that your statement of my claim goes beyond what I stated.)  In the case of people, the matter gets more complicated, but I seem to recall you indicating that you believe in evolution.  If so, this is a strange thing for you to be asking about, because evolution gives you the answer to how a human could come to be without being designed.

---

I'm glad to see at the end you see the difference between your fire analogy and the watch.  Not to mention fire in itself is not making something more beneficial or new.  My point being is that in your use of the watch analogy you found it preposterous that it would be able to tell time if thrown at a workbench.  I was likening that to the big bang theory of this universe being "thrown at a workbench" and out of that, comes immense order and complexity.  You found it absurd in the watch, but wholly accept it as plausible in something infinitely more complex as the universe.   

I do not find macroevolution convincing by any means, there are a lot of assumptions and leaps there.  Evolution and natural selection in describing variations within a species, yes.  The pure mathematical probability of beneficial mutations in single cell organisms giving rise to more complex ones leaves me highly suspicious.

You are completely missing the point.  I know that clocks are made by people.  So does everyone else who is familiar with clocks.  So when I say something about clocks, that bit of information is always affecting the kinds of things that I am going to say about them.  I do not pretend to not know that clocks are made by people.  In the case of a fire, there being a fire does not, by itself, tell me whether it is by design or accident that there is a fire.  When I watch the news, and some house burns, I do not know, before finding out more details of the particular story, if that is the result of design (i.e., arson) or if it is an accident.  The same idea applies to a forest fire; it could be design or it could be an accident.  Since I do not know in advance, I make no judgement in advance.  But with a damn clock, everyone knows that clocks are made by people.

As for the evolution idea, my apologies for imagining that you were more reasonable than you are.  I have no interest in arguing with you on that; I am sure that you will find others willing to do that (as can be seen from subsequent posts from others).