RE: Why Why?
November 16, 2021 at 1:55 pm
(This post was last modified: November 16, 2021 at 2:24 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(November 16, 2021 at 1:29 pm)Ferrocyanide Wrote: Yes, so calling a tree an ordered object, that is a convention.At the risk of insulting you, I think you're being pointlessly obtuse. Is this because you have objections to the convention of naming things, or because you worry some other (probably god bothering) foot is about to fall? If it's the latter, it's really not an issue in any of our discussions..as in between you and me, about order or purpose.
Some nutter might take it and run with it, but who cares, neither of us are nutters, and nutters will run with literally anything. There's no pre-empting that...because they're nuts. Yes, a tree is ordered. Yes, a tree is organized. Specifically with regards to the pile of it's constuent components laying around in processed or decomposed form somewhere. So too, are we.
Do I think that says something about any answer to the question of why or of purpose with regards to human beings in an exclusively natural context? I do. We're order machines. Made of order, compelled to order, creating vast disorder to maintain what order we inherit and effect. Palpably and viscerally enjoying that order and seeking to impose more of it in on and around everything we can see or touch.
Even, yes, and especially...when it isn't there. I think that's at least part of what we're for, what we're made to do, what purpose we serve...and it'd be a shame if it weren't, because it's not like we're going to stop doing it if so. We'd be a monumental waste of agency, in that event. It would also be a shame for a whole lot of other things, as us doing what we do is also a function that pertains to other creatures and other objects.
Quote:The question is, “Who says we have what purpose?”.Well, that's not the question for me, as I don't limit purpose to just what someone tells us..and I'm not a christian or a theist or a committed deontologist of any kind. The question for me is whether our objections to god-purpose, for example, really apply to non-god purpose..and whether the thorough rejection of purpose o why other-than-god-purpose or god -why as no more or less true than fairies is an accurate representation of facts in mere reality.
slartibartfast told us about
“My life doesn't have meaning otherwise
I won't feel fulfilled without having a purpose
I need to know what happens when I die”
My position is that the christian isn’t really talking about purpose(job, task, function). He doesn’t care about purpose at all. He is concerned about death.
In other words, that talk about purpose and meaning is smokescreen.
Is it really true that every apprehension pof purpose, even those explicitly natural apprehensions of purpose, is no more or less true than the idea that the fae people paint the morning dew on every flower? That every single apprehension of human purpose is just flat out wrong?
Quote:How so?Exactly the question. If purpose, as it's been suggested, is a fiction that people manufacture out of a fear of death and a strong desire to avoid it..how is it that this purpose compels people to give up their lives? To run at death, instead of away from death?
Quote:Roger................? Right...and so, what exactly are we objecting to at the outset of your previous response commented on above? The convention of naming, or the accuracy of the terms and observations which we apply that convention to? If I say there is order and disorder and we are little order machines..is it the words, is it the fear of utility to some nut who sees utility everywhere in all things....or is it that the facts which those statements purport to report, to which we're objecting, are not..in fact...facts?
Quote:There is a difference between a purpose given to you by an intelligent being compared to purpose given by nature.Sure, the source of the purpose. There's a convention for that. Extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic purpose is what use you have to someone. Intrinsic is what purpose you have as a consequence of the facts of what you are. Sometimes parents have kids for the increased labor - but that's not all that kids are..and..sometimes...they don't provide the labor. Preferring, instead, to chase other avenues of purpose, some equally extrinsic..but some, at least conceptually, intrinsic.
For example, I might write a program and run that program. The component that executes the program is the CPU.
Why do I write a program? Probably because I am going to get some use out of it.
Why do humans make hammers? Because they want to drive nails into wood.
Why do humans make watches? To synchronize events, to measure time.
CPUs, hammers, watches have a purpose.
A human has a brain and it thinks. It is a data processor and it forms ideas, solutions to problems.
Quote:Nature is brainless. It doesn’t take any decisions but there are designs in nature.Do you think that there are extrinsic and intrinsic purposes for which a brainy creature, as opposed to a brainless creature, are better suited?
Something like a planet or star has a spherical shape since it is liquid or gas or plasma and there is the Gravitational potential energy -> kinetic -> sound + heat -> heat
So, you end up with spherical planets and stars.
So, the properties of matter/space/energy leads to certain designs.
For life forms, there are multiple options. You can be a brainless bacteria, a brainless phytoplakton, a brainful elephant.
However, there is competition taking place among them. If that bacteria cannot seek food and use it, it goes extinct since it will eventually get damaged or will run out of fuel.
These lifeforms need to have the right set of properties to survive.
If they don’t, then you end up with a lifeless planet.
But i think you already know those ^^^^^ things.
Quote:I think most human babies have emotions. They feel hunger, they feel like pooping, they feel temperature and all that. Those basic functions help the baby survive.Mhm, without any real consideration of purpose and without the ability to even consider purpose, each of us is born with at least some things that you can describe as our purpose by sheer coincidence of biology. As another one of the members of our boards likes to point out, we're complex recursive systems..so whatever purpose we're inherently born with is unlikely to describe the full set of purpose which we might one day attain....but even if that was all we had...it would still be purpose..and if so, then the statement "there is no purpose" is manifestly and self demonstratively false as a fact, on it's face.
Those are the “purposes” that nature has given human babies.
Quote:Well, I can’t claim that what I described is the absolute truth.
It is hard to prove some of those things.
When it comes to people giving themselves a purpose, they use their emotions. They do what they feel like.
I'm unconcerned with whatever absolute truth is. I was asking whether you felt like the things you described as your purpose were..in your own apprehension, on equal footing with ghost stories?
If the objections you have to god-purpose, in your own estimation, equally apply to your purpose? It's hard to see how they would, and I've never personally known anyone who acts like they think so. My question, my entire question, which I could couch in any context and by any convention, is whether or not the way we purpose-troll ourselves on these boards, for example..is a true statement of reality..or even our own private apprehensions of reality..or is it a consequence of the conflict between facts and god-bothering faith's doomed insistence on owning all fact?
Do you, or some of us, end up saying things we don't believe to be true, and maybe even things which aren't true, as an argument against god-assertions which are..themselves, untrue? I can't personally see why the question of why can't be answered by facts, and natural facts. I can't personally see why the question of purpose can't be answered by facts, and natural facts. I also see and respect that it's a fact (and a natural fact) that this may be a limit of my own imagination. I'm just crowd sourcing help for understanding what I do not, with respect to that.
I mean, I get it. God this, god that....god bullshit. I'm wondering about things outside of that, that are not god-things.
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