The Meaninglessness of Meaning

[Angrboda]

Meaning exists because we exist as projects moving forward through time. I am not just a body. I am a student... or an engineer... or a housewife... We are our projects. When we ask ourselves who we are, the answer is in terms of capabilities, such as patience or intelligence, or in terms of roles, employee or student, or in terms of goals, working on being a musician. Our consciousness is more than impressions. Our 'self' project haunts our awake mind like a ghost we cannot see but nonetheless feel. It has momentum and inertia. The student values getting up when the alarm rings, because that is part of the project / role of his being a student who wants to be a doctor. He goes to class for the same reason. This term paper that is a part of his core class has an urgency that a non-core class paper does not. This exam causes him anxiety, because it matters to the project that he is.

Meaning exists because we are more than impressions. Meaning is a consequence of being a project in motion, moving forward through time.

[Pyrrho]

Nestor, let me see if I understand your opening post.  You are simply suggesting that there is no inherent value in things, that value implies a valuer?  Is that it?

That, yes,

So far, so good.

and also, does the possibility of such "valuers" existing in any physical sense dissolve  alongside the illusion of the "self"? If not, what's the justification? And if the illusion is good enough for us (er... seemingly impossible to avoid, not only in language, but in  any subjective - and hence, objective - construct of the world) to maintain such common usage of selves and values, why not other metaphysical concepts, like free will, and even gods?

Starting with the first sentence there, what the hell do you mean?

Look, I value things.  Which is another way of saying, I care about things.  Or to say the same thing in other words, I have feelings.  That, however, is as nothing to the universe.  I am going to die, just like everyone else.  What I value makes no difference for the universe.  My valuing something tells you about me.  It tells you nothing about anything else.  Except insofar as learning about me tells you about other things similar to me.

When we say that humans value things, that tells us about humans generally, not about the universe as a whole or anything else.


For the "self," as usual, I refer you to David Hume.  I am a bundle of perceptions.  I do not perceive my self as a separate thing.  And when we look at Alzheimer's patients, and at senile people, and brain damaged people, all of the modern science seems to support Hume's contention, that you are not some magical thing, but can lose a part of you without losing all of you.

[Mudhammam]

and also, does the possibility of such "valuers" existing in any physical sense dissolve  alongside the illusion of the "self"? If not, what's the justification? And if the illusion is good enough for us (er... seemingly impossible to avoid, not only in language, but in  any subjective - and hence, objective - construct of the world) to maintain such common usage of selves and values, why not other metaphysical concepts, like free will, and even gods?

Starting with the first sentence there, what the hell do you mean?

Look, I value things.  Which is another way of saying, I care about things.  Or to say the same thing in other words, I have feelings.  That, however, is as nothing to the universe.  I am going to die, just like everyone else.  What I value makes no difference for the universe.  My valuing something tells you about me.  It tells you nothing about anything else.  Except insofar as learning about me tells you about other things similar to me.

When we say that humans value things, that tells us about humans generally, not about the universe as a whole or anything else.


For the "self," as usual, I refer you to David Hume.  I am a bundle of perceptions.  I do not perceive my self as a separate thing.  And when we look at Alzheimer's patients, and at senile people, and brain damaged people, all of the modern science seems to support Hume's contention, that you are not some magical thing, but can lose a part of you without losing all of you.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is what do our concepts of value, i.e. meaningfulness, really mean? According to my understanding of a worldview that takes everything to be ultimately reducible to the physical (a term that is difficult enough to define), we have to basically say that a process of events that are objectively meaningless involve structures through which experiences (or call them emergent properties, though l'm inclined to agree with Sam Harris that "this seems merely a placeholder for a miracle") occur, within the abstraction of individuality, of a world that feels and appears largely non-physical; by this I include thoughts and memories, but also the sense of freedom to shape my future and to assign value however I choose, and of course, to immerse my nervous system in a state that some have described as transcendental . . .

I'm having trouble synthesizing this - the state of affairs we actually experience - with physicalism, is all.

[Mudhammam]

I should say that the tension I feel between the alternatives of physicalism and idealism is like the choice of a red or blue pill. The red pill destroys myself but preserves the world; the blue pill preserves myself but destroys the world.

[robvalue]

I reckon we could analyse brains, given sufficient technology, and identify exactly how and where "meaning" is granted and maintained regarding other abstract concepts whose images are similarly stored.

So then "meaning" manifests as the brain states we identify in this way.

[Little lunch]

Very interesting.
Makes me wonder how, in the quest for artificial intelligence, they are going to teach computers what meaning means.

[Mudhammam]

I reckon we could analyse brains, given sufficient technology, and identify exactly how and where "meaning" is granted and maintained regarding other abstract concepts whose images are similarly stored.

So then "meaning" manifests as the brain states we identify in this way.

Do you mean if someone could analyze one's brain in a "snapshot" moment and pinpoint a specific configuration of its different physical components that correlated with whatever abstractions said brain was entertaining in that moment? Would those abstractions be identical to the positioning of the material parts? I can't see how that could be the case. But if that's true, then does a certain ordering of neural networks equate to "meaning," or a state of affairs that is objectively meaningful?

[bennyboy]

I should say that the tension I feel between the alternatives of physicalism and idealism is like the choice of a red or blue pill. The red pill destroys myself but preserves the world; the blue pill preserves myself but destroys the world.

You know my feelings on this: what is apparently physical works just fine as a collection of ideas (about experienced properties and the things which seemingly underly them).  However, it seems to me that consciousness fits much more poorly into a physicalist perspective.

The only thing holding us back from an idealist word view is that physicalism just feels so darned convincing-- until we remember that feeling, itself, is nothing more than an idea.  So if there ever was a blue pill, you've already taken it, long ago.

Ironically, meaning is accepted for the same reason that most of us (at least implicitly) accept physicalism-- that the sense of certainty about it seems to validate it with no further inquiry required.

[Mudhammam]

You know my feelings on this: what is apparently physical works just fine as a collection of ideas (about experienced properties and the things which seemingly underly them).  However, it seems to me that consciousness fits much more poorly into a physicalist perspective.

The only thing holding us back from an idealist word view is that physicalism just feels so darned convincing-- until we remember that feeling, itself, is nothing more than an idea.  So if there ever was a blue pill, you've already taken it, long ago.

Ironically, meaning is accepted for the same reason that most of us (at least implicitly) accept physicalism-- that the sense of certainty about it seems to validate it with no further inquiry required.

The basic ideas of Kantian idealism, which, like all of them, I tend to view as resulting in skepticism and agnosticism, seem to me to make it a much, much better candidate than its Platonic or Berkeleian siblings. I still can't get past what I believe are major problems, namely, that while I don't want to wholly lose myself, I also don't think it deserves the elevated position idealists give the self - I'm with them epistemologically but metaphysically I can't justify giving my consciousness such prominence in the totality of things. What says you?

I wonder if existentialism aligns more comfortably with idealism?

[bennyboy]

Well, to be honest, what is known to you outside the context of your experience of self? Study science, and it is you sitting in a chair having the experience of listening to a professsor. Study philosophy, and it is you listening to a professor proving that he himself is an illusion. There are neither things, nor ideas, which can be real for us without experience.

However, I'm very concerned with the nature of the framework of self as opposed to its content. It seems to me that all content-- ideas, feelings, experiences, take place on something more unchanging, something like a movie playing out on a screen. If so, then the self isn't the content-- ideas about the things, world views, etc., but rather a simple philosophical quantity: the capacity for experience.

I'd say that the self of non-ego is the purest form of self, although somehow paradoxical-- something like the Buddhist nirvana, maybe, since it identifies only with the screen and not with any of the random content which flits over its surface. The next "level" is the self which identifies with shapes and forms. The next would be like the one who looks at a 2D screen and sees a 3D image that in reality isn't there at all.