(August 11, 2021 at 9:03 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: @LadyForCamus ...for meaning to exist, I believe, some conscious entity must sustain it, in the same way thay substance sustains form. But that doesnt have to be me and my life can have had meaning even if it ends.
Great post, but I have an alternative idea. By this idea, nothing can have meaning that isn't, in some form, eternal. What if consciousness on Earth ends - were the lives that were previously lived without meaning?
The one bit of mysticism that I have allowed myself is to hypothesize that something can only have meaning in "the now". Yes, something from the past could find meaning "now" as well.
So, for something to have meaning, there must be some moment of time where someone notices meaning. That moment is transitory, not eternal.
Perhaps because of my physics training, I view time as a mystery. Time may have a beginning and end, or may cycle endlessly. Time may be an illusion, and all times "exist". I don't find meaning in eternity, or an infinite set of eternities. No-one is going to even know that I lived 200 years from now.
If any meaning exists at all, it is the meaning in a single moment.