It’s essentially claimed by Bandit. As for the rest of your post(s) until you expand on your one-liners there’s nothing worth commenting on (nor is it possible to since I’m not psychic. Whatever I do say I’m pretty sure will get a satisfied “that’s not what I meant” in reply).
Take it up with him/her, then.
I’m just disputing your claim that meaning and mechanisms are distinct types (even in the absence of an underlying absolute meaning).
Fine, take issue. I have no clue what your issue is, or what your viewpoint is, but at least I’m aware that you take issue.
You know…if you bothered to stick your neck out and lay out an actual argument, instead of tossing out koans from a safe distance, thoughless people like me might not have the gall to misinterperet you.
I agree with everything you say. There is an inner desire to help others, and I can see how it is not necessary to believe in God in order to follow that desire. But usually altruistic individuals do believe in God. Like Jefferson, they may not believe in the popular God, but they do believe in a personal God. One of the points I try to make is “why not believe in a personal God, since it is a very helpful thing to do.” If God can not be proved scientifically, so what, God can be proved personally.
I’ve stated it quite clearly above. I’ll repeat: meaning is a mechanism, if there is no underlying absolute meaning. In formal terms, objects of consciousness have intentional content, i.e. they are about something or lead to something (which can be another thought/feeling or action). If I’m hungry, that’s an indication for me to fetch food. Now, that’s a very simple fundamental connection. For more abstract things like emotions or aesthetics, we appeal to evolutionary explanations for why they exist. Fear as a signal to fight, freeze or flee. Human beauty assessment as a heuristic for evolutionary fitness. For the most fundamental psychological elements, the answer for the atheist lies in neurology. Point is, meaning is a mechanism to assess and direct psychological activity. Of course, the base assumption here is that there is no underlying absolute meaning.
We still have the ability to create meaning.
Obviously I need to put this another way. When I say that you (or bandit) is confusing meaning with mechanism - what I’m saying is that you believe that the mechanism for how something came into existence defines its nature in toto. That everything reduces to it’s (usually vastly oversimplified) origin.
Of course you and Bandit mean two totally different things when you talk about mechanisms. But they can be handled together, since at root you’re both making the same error. In bandit’s case, he reduces all human consciousness (values, thought, meaning, etc) to it’s *physical * mechanism. All consciousness and the components of consciousness reduce to the “meat.” The error here is it’s like saying that Hamlet reduces to a series of marks on the page. Of course it doesn’t - of course the marks create meaning. And neuronal circuits may just be an arrangement of meat, but it’s an arrangement that holds and creates meaning.
*Your * error is in reducing phenomenon to the evolutionary mechanisms which created them. Or to turn that around you don’t understand that all evolution seeks to explain is how something came to be - it does not seek to evaluate phenomena or even explain what something is good for. Aesthetics may exist in part because of the selective value of assortative mating - but aesthetics is not just *for * assortative mating. The meaning of a phenomenon does not reduce to the mechanism that created it. Again let’s take Hamlet. Your explanatory mechanim might be that Hamlet was created so Shakespeare could exercise his verbal prowess and pay off some bills. But Hamlet does not reduce to just an ego-boost and a bill payment.
And the arrangement is dictated and manipulated by more fundamental laws. BTW, I don’t believe that consciousness is physical. So that’s between you and da Bandit.
I did not claim that. For aesthetics, we appeal to neurology. I linked human beauty assessment specifically to mate selection.
You’ve asserted it, but you need to explain it as well. Keep in mind that the base assumption is that no absolute meaning exists.
We have the ability to create priorities, goals, visions, etc. We can not create meaning, it can only be discovered. True we can assign meanings to our lives, but there will never be knowledge of its correctness. It will be “made up” and therefor forever questionable.
My self assigned meaning is the only kind of meaning that I care about. If some self anointed god wants to assign me another, too bad; I’m not his puppet.
Most people are puppets of their own belief systems. The belief pulls the strings and the puppet dances. Not so with one who has no belief systems.
Everyone has a belief system; most people are not puppets. The only people who are truly puppets are fools ( who don’t think for themselves ), morons ( who can’t think for themselves ), and fanatics.
Well, and puppets. Y’know, like Charlie McCarthy and Miss Piggy and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
Puppet Dictator : “You heard me ! Arrest Howdy Doody and string him up !”
Everyone has beliefs, but not everyone has a belief system. Belief systems are confining, such as science, and religion, one must conform to their dictates or risk being ostracized. Belief is like faith, it is ok unless you hold it so tightly it strangles you.
Only free thinkers would understand.