[INFJ] Do you ever feel that nothing is really meaningful?

[charlatan]

I wonder what meaningful even is about--I understand being happy and sad, but I can't generally follow when people look for 'meaning'.... I mean, I understand it only to the extent we can give definitions of things

I better get the concept of 'goodness' and 'truth' than I do 'meaning.' Unless we mean meaning in the dictionary sense.

 

[Ren]

I wonder what meaningful even is about--I understand being happy and sad, but I can't generally follow when people look for 'meaning'.... I mean, I understand it only to the extent we can give definitions of things

I better get the concept of 'goodness' and 'truth' than I do 'meaning.' Unless we mean meaning in the dictionary sense.

I get what you mean. I think a lot of the time when people refer to 'meaning' in these contexts, it's to some kind if telos -- an intrinsic direction or purpose to existence.

So existence having meaning would be more or less equivalent to existence being by nature driven towards a certain goal. In French, the word 'meaning', sens, is literally the same word as sense in English. So if a French person wanted to say: "Existence has no meaning", they would say "Existence has no sense" -- which implies a sense of direction, a directness towards a purpose. I think that's the gist of it.

 

[charlatan]

@Ren -- yeah you're right, telos must be what it's getting at... it's an idea I've always had trouble with, do you relate to it out of curiosity?; it seems like it's either kind of trivialized or unanswerable to me in the following sense: if something exists in most traditional senses, it has a nature. That nature would determine what it 'does.' Now, that may be sufficient for some to answer what the goal they must pursue is -- you do what's in your nature (could be pursuing pleasure/evading suffering, or something else.)

On the other hand, this doesn't answer why the thing exists. Given it exists, it has this purpose. However, only things that exist necessarily have anything like an intrinsic purpose, it seems.
I interpret the question of purpose as usually asking "why do I exist?" and the answer can't be "to do what is in your nature" because that's what you do, like a hamster on a wheel, GIVEN you exist. It doesn't explain why you are there to do that hamster-wheel thing.

And it seems like the only things that have a strong argument for existing necessarily (if they do at all) are abstract objects, which, not coincidentally, are causally inert, hence don't do anything!

Even if God created the world, this issue comes up: he's usually seen as responsible for all else, and perfectly sufficient in himself, thus his act of creation is free will. So, whatever purpose he imbues us with seems also deeply contingent, in the sense that he might have resisted creating us at all.

Now what if God existed by himself? Then it's odd, because he's not abstract, he has causal powers, but that's the point -- anything he does will not be an intrinsic outcome of his nature! Anything he does is CONSTRAINED by his intrinsic nature (he can't do evil). However, he doesn't have to do anything but exist.

 

[Ren]

@Ren -- yeah you're right, telos must be what it's getting at... it's an idea I've always had trouble with, do you relate to it out of curiosity?; it seems like it's either kind of trivialized or unanswerable to me in the following sense: if something exists in most traditional senses, it has a nature. That nature would determine what it 'does.' Now, that may be sufficient for some to answer what the goal they must pursue is -- you do what's in your nature (could be pursuing pleasure/evading suffering, or something else.)

On the other hand, this doesn't answer why the thing exists. Given it exists, it has this purpose. However, only things that exist necessarily have anything like an intrinsic purpose, it seems.
I interpret the question of purpose as usually asking "why do I exist?" and the answer can't be "to do what is in your nature" because that's what you do, like a hamster on a wheel, GIVEN you exist. It doesn't explain why you are there to do that hamster-wheel thing.

And it seems like the only things that have a strong argument for existing necessarily (if they do at all) are abstract objects, which, not coincidentally, are causally inert, hence don't do anything!

Even if God created the world, this issue comes up: he's usually seen as responsible for all else, and perfectly sufficient in himself, thus his act of creation is free will. So, whatever purpose he imbues us with seems also deeply contingent, in the sense that he might have resisted creating us at all.

Now what if God existed by himself? Then it's odd, because he's not abstract, he has causal powers, but that's the point -- anything he does will not be an intrinsic outcome of his nature! Anything he does is CONSTRAINED by his intrinsic nature (he can't do evil). However, he doesn't have to do anything but exist.

I agree with most of what you say here. Personally, my stance is quite fiercely anti-teleological at this point. Teleological thinking has had too much of a nefarious influence on world history (communism, etc.) and I don't see it as metaphysically sound. What I do take seriously, though, is that most humans seem to crave this sense of telos, they don't sit comfortably with the idea that existence has no particular purpose. So philosophically, I'm more interested in what this craving says about human being's making sense of its existence as a being in the world, than in the supposed metaphysical soundness of a teleological view of the cosmos.

In Heidegger's tortured prose: "Dasein is a being that does not simply occur among other beings. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that in its being this being is concerned about its very being. Thus it is constitutive of the being of Dasein to have, in its very being, a relation of being to this being." Translation for the uninitiated: what distinguishes human being from other beings is that it is a being concerned with its own existence. And this (more than teleology proper) is of philosophical interest: with this human concern with the telos of things if there is no such thing?

Note: Heidegger is mostly dismissed by analytic philosophers as a purveyor of obscure philosophical gibberish. This gives you a first peek into how the continental school differs from the analytic, haha!

 

[charlatan]

So philosophically, I'm more interested in what this craving says about human being's making sense of its existence as a being in the world, than in the supposed metaphysical soundness of a teleological view of the cosmos.

OK that makes sense; I think this is probably one of those points where I find people's concern with telos (which obviously exists -- tons of the world religions are founded around that) pretty odd psychologically even (not just in terms of its absolute consistency that I covered above).

I'm more of a 'I want to have fun and not suffer' kinda guy.

 

[Ren]

OK that makes sense; I think this is probably one of those points where I find people's concern with telos (which obviously exists -- tons of the world religions are founded around that) pretty odd psychologically even (not just in terms of its absolute consistency that I covered above).

I'm more of a 'I want to have fun and not suffer' kinda guy

Yep. I think the analytically inclined philosophers tend to just say: whatever supposedly grounds, conditions, or biases reason, shields itself by definition from rational scrutiny, since reason cannot examine what it presupposes; but then, anything goes in terms of what that grounding/condition/telos could be, and that is not philosophically very alluring, because it seems that one won't be able to make real progress in its investigation. Hence, one had better focus on more promising/productive philosophical topics.

 

[Disguised]

The latest of these feelings were once stepping into this theory. What is the point if everything starts all over again?

"Conformal cyclic cosmology
The theoretical physicists Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan propose that the universe iterates through infinite cycles, with the future timelike infinity of each previous iteration being identified with the Big Bang singularity of the next. "

 

[Wyote]

The latest of these feelings were once stepping into this theory. What is the point if everything starts all over again?

"Conformal cyclic cosmology
The theoretical physicists Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan propose that the universe iterates through infinite cycles, with the future timelike infinity of each previous iteration being identified with the Big Bang singularity of the next. "

Hitler has died as many times as the number of people he executed. To infinity and beyond!

 

[Disguised]

Hitler has died as many times as the number of people he executed. To infinity and beyond!

Hope so. Even if the universe as a whole wouldn't be the same it just doesn't make more of a sense than an experiment. Not that I'd believe in that sort of a thing but still. MINDBLOWING!